Our minds’ eyes can be keen. I hear
the young doctor in Gaza City tell me
through the car radio what she’s seen,
and I see, too, a man with arms snug
around a lifeless child. The doc asks
the man if he knows his little one’s dead
and I recognize his frozen wince, reflex
ancient and new, resistance to what is
not yet allowed to be true. Doc speaks
the scene of children’s bodies obscuring
the floor. There, can you see it now?
And the grimacing girl, an arm hanging
odd—bone pokes through the skin
like a stiff finger pointing at all this
torn by a claw of sky—she shivers
a chill of despair, her mother’s nowhere
and the doctor herself progressively
numb. Can you see our physician
pursing her lips, eyebrows set firm,
forehead uncreased? So she’ll hide
her overwhelm from us, as she must
decide who in the room might be kept
alive. Not these with no evident wounds
whose hemorrhages can’t be sewn, lungs
and spleens shock-blown in unopened
envelopes. Those under their homes?
They don’t arrive. The doctor will tend
too few, shift end, and in bed her nerves
spark the night. Hearts’ eyes, sharp
in the dark, no device. I’ve parked
out front, engine and radio off—yes,
this other light threads the earth.