Meribeni T Murry
Like the Earth.
Especially the pebble like Earth dying inside careless hands,
Rough hands that don’t know how to treat a wound kind way.
There is a lone wound in the shape of a footprint on the moon
And there will be more when our children begin their alphabets.
Our young ones still celebrate victories.
We have days of summer and frolic and then
the sea coughing out plastics and people from her belly:
Cold men and women huddled before a burning bush in winter.
We have heard God’s voice melting like liquid mercury in an
asphalt town somewhere.
I tell myself everything we love is in need of saving –
The grass, the sky, the flowers under whose soft gaze
we exchanged our first kiss.
Like them, I keep my eyes on you, terrified
I won’t be able to catch you quick enough
when you disappear like matter into
the mouth of a wound if I fall asleep
