Winter Solstice

The sun hides beneath the Southern hemisphere,

and the darkness weighs upon us early and long today.

A cold, wet breeze swirls memories like flurries

in your mind. You speak to Susan,

dead twenty-two years, so matter-of-factly,

“Susan, get your father his paper.”

Your white brow rests there like a snowdrift,

and the furrows digging at the corners of your eyes,

like plowed fields, sit fallow and frozen.

It's the winter in your eyes

that makes me look away.

You say you're cold and want a blanket:

I rise to give you one, but you damn me

and call Susan. I tell you she's gone out for the paper.

You are quiet again, and grab the blanket

and pull it to your chin. Beneath the white

blanket your breathing is heavy, thick, and slow.

You close your eyes like an early sunset, and the nameless

dark shuts you inside earlier tonight than ever I remember.

Darfur

When the village lies in ashes--
cold, black and silent--three hundred thousand die
and smoke rises like a prayer:
Rachael weeps for her firstborn.

When the bodies lie ashen, too,
the wounds speak into the abyss
and Able's blood cries out from the dust.
Ache, howl, and wail for those who remain!

When a child's form lies in the heap
grasping hollow death and a gash in his head
with small thin fingers,
there is no Phoenix, and he will not rise.

When ashes flit on the wind,
a woman sits and hugs her knees,
rocks slowly and stares distantly
wrapped in red shame like a scarf.

When an old man's tears wet his ash-colored beard,

two million walk the desert road to the refugee camp,
and the church debates the ashen-gray areas of obscure doctrine,
and remains cold, black, and silent.

http://www.phrusa.org/research/sudan/