The electric fence is low,
and the coyotes many
this verdant year,
this jubilee when farmers
change their signs
from demands we
PRAY FOR RAIN
to THANK YOU LORD.
We watch the backs
like white hills, beneath
a waxing moon —
A Communion wafer raised
over the chalice of marsh
and streams, over fleece
of the sheep, the same hue
as the Sierra at dusk.
Shy rabbits abound, leap
before our headlights
at every curve, and later
I read that many never live
to see the second spring —
The most they can hope for,
testify biologists, who say
mother cottontails do not even
fight snakes in the burrow,
as they are the endless cycle of prey —
and know this.
Somewhere in the dark,
in the land of gold wheat
and blue skies,
my student Alina is studying Blake
by lantern, in her Kharkiv basement,
she is asking for another quiet night,
for no rockets to find her.
Somewhere in Gaza City,
my friend Ahmad the photographer,
raises his lens, to capture the dahlias
of vengeance, the endless bouquet of fire
Netanyahu lobs toward Gaza, enraged
at the dancing teens hunted down in the fields,
where Jacob once wrestled God,
not far from where the words of mercy
from the dying Christ on his cross
are too easily forgotten,
where the peace Mohammed felt
at the end of his night journey
before God’s feet
is now nothing but mortar smoke.
In all these places, this night
they are washing down the blood,
they are preparing for bombs,
they are holding children
so close, in prayer
they might graze on peace,
if only in dream’s song.
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