(Spoken word poetry written while returning from aid work to Syrian refugees in Jordan – reflections from a conversation with a child describing their drawing of their bombed-out neighborhood as “a place with pieces of people on the ground.”)
When you’re in pieces on the ground
it doesn’t matter
that the missile was blue,
or silver, or grey;
or that it was caught
for a moment
by the sun
before spreading it’s darkness
everywhere.
It doesn’t matter
that you were wavering
between becoming an artist,
or an astronaut;
but lately
just someone
who builds something;
anything.
It doesn’t matter
that an old woman,
struggling to push a cart
filled with bread,
was there,
and suddenly not there,
as though she never existed.
It doesn’t matter
that the world
saw a photo
of your street
– maybe just another street,
and for a moment
thought about the power
of flying metal.
It doesn’t matter
that the motive
was some small piece
of some larger plan
that will go on, and on, and on.
When you’re in pieces on the ground
it only matters
that the smallest of seconds
meant the difference
between now,
and anything next.
When you’re in pieces on the ground
it only matters
that in that moment
of still sensing life
you lost the sense
of being whole;
with no meaning,
or reason, or rhyme,
or fateful frozen instant,
just in time,
just in time;
when you’re in pieces on the ground.