In Afghanistan, a widow
receives my monthly stipend,
a small apology as I monitor
my intake
of news, post a cheque
but can’t stomach
the photos.
My widow’s daughters,
swathed in black,
don’t attend school,
they’re shadowed
even in the marketplace
by the insistent drone –
a Reaper, navigated
by a pilot in the desert
of Nevada, who watches
and with a joystick,
eliminates.
At five pm, she clocks out,
roars off in her SUV, picks up
her kids at day care,
fixes supper, tucks them
into bed and crumples undercover
of her own darkness.
I lounge at the beach in full view
of a cloudless sky, fluke of providence –
yet impressed into sand,
my bones, shrouded
by the weight of war,
cry out to the Heavens – Fix this!
Can it be
we're not broken but whole,
not drowning but safe?
Did Mary suffer, knowing as she did,
each wound her child would bear? And yet –
she said yes, to the angel,
yes, to all of it.
