Those we left by the road still stagger among us;

we lean on their diminished bodies as we move.

Talc-tasting air, smelling of urine and hot stone,

burns our skin, shriveling our memories of them.

The whisper has passed; this road is closed to us.

This ditch of stubble will be our home for an hour,

a day, forever, until this throng moves us,

forces us up to walk, again, this endless road.

Ahead, those green hills rejected our pleas.

The distant canopies’ chattering fell silent,

fell to fear, as we gazed, as one, with one breath held,

and another stone was thrown to bruise the heart.

This child on the sharp rack of my hip

stares with eyes passive as stones.

My child of bone in his gray flesh bag,

stares passed wanting, never cries, only

clenches the one ragged wall of his home.

This was originally titled Refugees and was reproduced here with a few changes from a copy dated October, 2003