We Choose Up Sides

We Choose Up Sides

(“The earth, O Lord, is full of your steadfast love; teach me your statutes!” Psalm 119:64)

My request to understand the end of days was declined,
so I,
with feet unwillingly clenching the sand,
survey the pockmarked earth.

I thought they were potholes when the
desert concert ended early. But the sun
never explodes that loudly at the end of the day.

I heard that firebombs burned a hospital and
our children are hidden underground
by their captors.

And while missiles whine, while grandmothers weep,
while the smoke wafts high above the borders,
the selected leaders can find no way to restore
the broken earth
except to break her into quarters.

My face unconsciously flinches,
the heat burns like teenage blemishes.
I cannot debate. I cannot slow the hate that
floods like sludge. The water is not potable,
the water has been shut off at its source.

The grains of sand are shards cutting our toes,
we cannot sleep. We cannot cry. We cannot understand
why. We hate at a distance and invent our fictions
to justify the blood that flows down the streets.

Where
is
this mercy?

Where is the
playground where children play?

Where are the prayers that extend deeper
than ancestry? Where are rivers of life that
turn gall into wine?

We draw the lines so well. We choose up sides.
One life for a dozen. A dozen for a village.
A village for a nation. A nation…

Oh God,
why?

Are there not peacemakers within range of
the missiles and squadrons? Why do the church bells
toll
and send the crowd to war?
Peacemakers, children, hostages, generals,
saints, mystics, truants, tyrants,
presidents, ministers, visitors, and citizens

Cry,
why?