NO SAFE SKY *


I meant to think drums
and thought bombs,
I meant to dream land
and dreamt land-mines,
I meant to hear thunder
and heard tanks rolling,
I meant to see lightning
and saw burning bursts of white gas
and searchlights scanning the night.

They warned of a place full of terrorists,
I said they must mean full of terror—
in the eyes of the children,
in their frantic games
their paintings of dead men and homes
without walls
their running back and forth, trying to hide
from the sky
in their folded paper machine guns, gripped
by small hands and pointed heavenward,

and in the fast beats of their hearts.

And those mothers, teachers: I saw
their wary eyes, heard words of worry—
not only for the maiming of the young
but for fear that fear will grow up to hate

And all, visitors and wounded, ask:
Will more hate come
along the green-blue line,
along the beige beaches,
fronting a sunny Mediterranean sea?



Gloria Bletter

[I was part of the delegation to Gaza during May 2009 following the
December-January attack by Israel upon this already besieged Palestinian area.]