SOMALIA ON MY MIND
Overcast at sunrise, with a cool breeze. A gray catbird in the middle of the gray driveway picks pebbles for the collection in its gizzard.---Dave Bonta, The Morning Porch, 07-23-11
At sunrise, they rouse their children,
if they have not yet mercifully died,
to trek through desert mirage searching
for oases, cacti, lizards, iguanas, worms,
anything. It’s a landscape of clean bones,
or carrion abandoned by even the crows
that fell prey to the ghastly death march.
if they have not yet mercifully died,
to trek through desert mirage searching
for oases, cacti, lizards, iguanas, worms,
anything. It’s a landscape of clean bones,
or carrion abandoned by even the crows
that fell prey to the ghastly death march.
I take a guilty gulp at my now tepid tea
when I espy a catbird swallow pebbles
strewn on the sunbaked driveway.
I wonder: can a starving child’s belly
hold as many rock chips to ease pangs
of hunger? Catbirds prefer these strewn
granules to desert sand, I reckon,
but promptly neglect a morning shrug.
when I espy a catbird swallow pebbles
strewn on the sunbaked driveway.
I wonder: can a starving child’s belly
hold as many rock chips to ease pangs
of hunger? Catbirds prefer these strewn
granules to desert sand, I reckon,
but promptly neglect a morning shrug.
—Albert B. Casuga
07-23-11
07-23-11
Albert, I would love permission to print this poem of yours in my Quaker meeting's newsletter this month if you would allow it? It speaks so powerfully to the condition of the children we are too quickly able to forget. Beautiful and powerful.
ReplyDeleteGracias!
If it is going to help, by all means.
ReplyDeleteThank you Albert, and Blessings to you!
ReplyDelete