High up in October Oaks

Sitting in the living room
On a warm autumn night
With the front door open
To the evening air,
We talk about family matters,
How the grandchildren
Are faring in school,
What our kids will be doing
For the holidays.
We hear the owls conversing also,
And a car drive by once in a while,
And a neighbor calling for her kids
To come home.
And into the midst of that calmness
And quietness
There comes a sudden explosion,
Then another,
And another,
Sirens blaring,
Buildings blown to pieces,
People screaming, howling, wailing,
Running out of collapsing apartments and hospitals,
Parents and children
Crying out for each other,
The horribly injured pleading for help,
Ones crushed beneath debris
Moaning their last words.
On a warm autumn night
In Sebastopol, California,
We are hearing the sounds
Of an ongoing genocide
Happening 7000 miles away
In Gaza and Lebanon,
Being perpetrated
By the war criminal state of Israel.
We are hearing the dying
Plead for help,
Plead for someone
To make the explosions stop,
Lying armless or legless in the ashes and dust,
Begging for mama or papa,
Husband or wife,
To come and embrace them,
To shield them,
To save them.
They lie in thickening pools
Of their own blood and tears
As the massacre continues,
As Israeli soldiers
Envelop themselves in carnage,
Wrap themselves in slaughter,
Don the undergarments
Of women they have raped and murdered,
Smear their uniforms with gore.
And as a little child soon to be no more
Whimpers in the rubble,
The owls outside our house,
On a warm night at the beginning of autumn,
Whisper about bottomless grief and sorrow
From high up
In the October oaks.

This article was posted on Sunday, October 20th, 2024 at 8:00am and is filed under Poetry.