Someone in Yemen dies
while I write.
Somebody somewhere
screams in the night;
nearby, somebody else is
born crying.
Somewhere in California
a spark
springs like a snake—
Paradise dying?
Somehow a mother
confronts a steel wall that
looks at her with
hate in its eyes, and
punishes her as she
waits for asylum.
Somewhere a prisoner’s
pushed through a gate
and freedom’s extinguished,
a flame subsiding.
It matters not that I
stare at a screen
composing on silent keys
in the night.
Someone in Yemen dies
while I write.
The earth lunges and rolls
to the right,
and each of us clings to it,
most of us trying.
