The Lord’s Prayer and Vapour Trails

The border of Gaza is outlined by the bodies of children.
The children who escape until the next raid
dream of a day without tremors. Weaned under oxide clouds,
fostered in the cinders of not being counted they fashion weapons
out of charred wood and rebar and fantasize about survival. *

I’ve read of a man from a country that supports the country
that raids its neighbour. He believed empathy is a fantasy.
Sympathy is possible, he said, but empathy does a lot of damage.

I’ve also read of people who believe life is a series of resurrection-like
awakenings. They wonder: If only we had the opportunity to try out
being a Métis boy in a Residential School one day, and then the next day,
a girl in Afghanistan, then a migrant mother detained in Texas,
a Jew in Warsaw wearing a yellow star, a Palestinian teenager
washing her baby sister, wrapping her body in a kafan,
that milk-white cotton burial shroud.

I read about a woman who anointed the feet of a storyteller.
The storyteller had become famous for compassion and forgiveness,
and the woman loved him. She used the most expensive perfume—
they said the whole house was filled with a wondrous fragrance—
then she dried his feet with her hair.

Later, the reporter who wrote down the story added that many
thought it an offence, a spectacle, and a great waste. However,
the storyteller, who apparently knew he’d soon be lynched,
said it was a beautiful preparation for his burial.

There’s a country with a newly rebranded Department of War.
Recently, they made a short movie. It displays tanks and paratroopers,
aircraft carriers and jets, fiery contrails and boiling lines of smoke
behind speeding missiles, while the Secretary of War
solemnly recites the Lord’s Prayer.

If you look through the papers of that ancient reporter,
this is the prayer that follows: Blessed are the compassionate,
the merciful, the mourners, the peacemakers…
It’s the prayer the storyteller taught.
The one who lived in the same place where today,
the bodies of children lie.

*With prayers, yesterday’s announced ceasefire holds.