A Valentine for Palestine

Last week on Valentine’s Day, the phrase “a valentine for Palestine,” appeared in my mind as a title for a poem, but I had no idea how to approach such a poem. A few days later it occurred to me there would be no address to send such a poem to, just blasted apart buildings, so I began there.

I will have to fold three ways
the little pink envelope
to get it through the cracks in the rubble
where your home used to be.

To whom I send it
I do not know
but there must be a whom
not an idea, a person
with a name, who breathes
and suffers, not in the abstract
but along living, individual nerves.

So many of you are children
that this becomes an uncles valentine
full of protective wishes
slipped through the grey lines
of grey thoughts 
adults make in theoretical air
where your face disappears.

Or maybe I should make it
into a paper airplane
send it up against the drones
quad copters and screaming F-16's,
do something useful 
with this little, red
human
heart.