Drops of Color/ For No Reason

Drops of Color
For No Reason

A stuffed animal
left behind
‘in a child’s dirty boot.’

A maternity ward
‘has collapsed.’
I look out the window
…I want to hear the cries
of life just beginning.

Instead, I hear the sound of rubble
—person sifting through stones.

From a safe harbor
on the other side of the sea,
I keep watch
—safely
‘in my bed’
—the sandy shore.

The arms of a woman
clutching a blanket
—her child no more

—her husband turns running
the other way
letting-go of her hand.

Tears, like a dam bursting,
—soak his boots
as he makes his way

into a war

holding a gun
he knows not how to use.

Does he really have
to learn THIS way?

‘What is the war of this war?’

He was just warming
the milk in his child’s bottle
—it’s empty.

Are these words of mine bullets?
or are they wounds?
Imaginary shrapnel rips
open my chest wall!

I feel the pain searing my heart
pumping with the freedom to breathe,

and somewhere
NOT so far away

bombs litter the sky—

‘for no reason.’

Written under the wise tutelage of June  S. Gould, Ph.D.