Gaza

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As the rain fell relentlessly yesterday,
I felt a slowing of time and an invitation to prayer –
a sacred space emerged
to sit with the anniversary statistics of loss,
       to stack up each singular death into a towering altar
              that I can only hope reaches your ear,
to anoint the mass grave of these past two years
       with my one truly renewable resource: tears.
I know your own lament pours forth in every drop,
for the way of the wicked flourishes:
Death garishly parades its distorted fecundity,
reaping and consuming life beyond my ability to comprehend
       and certainly beyond my power to stop.
I am bowed low and ground down
        by the sheer weight of loss,
rendered more entirely impotent in beholding
       the exhausting scope of Evil’s unspeakable harvest.
But still I know
there are no stillborn prayers.
So, forehead to the death-sodden soil,
I wept an offering:
a wordless plea for you to bring destruction to ruin,
       to sever its umbilical pseudo-life at the source.
I made a cross of moistened ashes on Your forehead,
begging you to once again face Death with and for us,
       to release your resurrection Spirit
       as a flooding pestilence upon Evil.
Lord, may the way of the wicked finally perish.
Amen.