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.

When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
the moon and the stars that you have established;
what are humans that you are mindful of them,
mortals that you care for them? -Psalm 8

And yet, here we are, cared for, given a home on earth
by the God of mystery—the untamed Spirit of mercy.

The God of white rabbits and weasels and winter trails winding
through scrub poplar, under an evening sky popping with starlight;
and it’s only six o’clock, still long
glorious hours before you’re called inside to bed.

And see how the moon’s mindful light
concedes to a nearby constellation;
an encouragement, little one, to name yourself,
and shine on.

Shine, on the frozen snow squeaking under your felt-lined boots.
Shine on the trail to the dark barn, the warm cows, the work
of your fingers, the volley of steaming milk
hitting the galvanized pail, and the one-eared tabby waiting,
on the calf-pen rail for an arching stream.

Shine, on your cabin retreat, shine on the suet in the bean can
on the veranda, the sudden appearances of juncos and redpolls,
and nuthatches stealing seeds to cache in the crevices of poplar bark,
and a quartet of whisky jacks, their pewter shadows
lengthening in worship under a leafless birch.

Even the frost, building its straight line
along the window pane in the loft, shines
with a mix of moonlight and starlight,
a soft argent caress coming to rest on your silver hair,
your laugh lines, your tear-worn face, your midnight prayer,
your bins full of memories.

Without an element of atheism, no religion can be credible. -Fanny Howe

for all our days pass away;
our years come to an end like a sigh. -Psalm 90

in them the divine mystery . . . .
the same old beautiful mystery. -Walt Whitman

now: a little trouble at the heart
shallows at the lungs
a cold draft in my bones
my skin is giving up
the light in my eye
once an incandescent furnace
now relies on reflection from an outside source
like an LED screen
it’s like the future is watching my wincing approach
i’m a pressed relic of flower power
but history calls me to wander

then: i was a student of rebellion
a mocker of mortgages
a piqued critic of the status quo
an acolyte of Timothy Leary
turned on, tuned in, dropped out
then dropped out again

returning to capitalism
all was forgiven, but i was forever relegated to consumer status
what choice did i have / you always have a choice
mein innerer Krieg

i’ve returned to Christian faith to keep something alive
childhood maybe
the heart of it

if i had the courage, i might be Catholic
what with their astonishing saints, like Francis
whose life was more poetic than a poem
but St. Peter is still weeping over the bureaucracy at the Vatican
and the absence of sparrows

complete darkness relies on a sliver of light
total light requires a hint of dark
even fervent faith needs the whisper of religion
for ballast
and religion needs adjectives and the glint of doubt
to keep believers off the wet cement of dogma

lately: i’ve been going to a church
stepping out last Sunday
my playlist shuffled up Grateful Dead’s, Friend of the Devil
some still believe God is humourless

1.
There are times when life can culminate
in a quarter mile of country road: dark
before dawn, a heavy fog, and you, blind
to the breathing bodies galloping near,
suddenly, here, as you pedal your bike,
narrow tires on crushed gravel,
gliding downhill toward town, toward dawn,
your face wet with dew
and filled with the sound of slender hooves,
a herd of lithe ungulates in the mist,
and you, a child of God, a child of Gaia, adopted,
one of them, undiluted joy rushing right through you.

2.
Are we not human? Does our flesh not respond to a caress?
Do our souls not open in moments radiant, prismatic, sublime?
Are we not moved by mercy and kindness?
Does not Gaza choke and numb us?

How can I write of love, of surrender, of joy,
under the global shadow of people being torn open
by hate and missiles?

And while the genocide drags on, always worse;
the soul, despite that poem by Jack Gilbert,*
dwindles to a gnat.

They—the wardens of poetic scholarship—say Denise’s poetry
suffered lyrically when she began writing politically.
Seven books and three incarcerations later, and finally,
the end of the Vietnam war, How, asks Ms. Levertov,
does one evade total involvement in life?

3.
It has to do with love.
Somehow, this feeling, more than a feeling,
an outlook, a be-ing, that is utterly self-forgetting,
brazenly inclusive, roguishly accepting of people and place,
position and circumstance, recklessly open to scene and sound,
time and hope, courageously embracing loss and grief,
willingly patient of pain and death, this more-than-a-feeling,
this original love that invades your morning
like a sudden sun shooting through a stand of elm,
your ultimate surrender to life. Your no-way-out calling.

*A Brief for the Defense