This Ash is Full of Silence

Perhaps I shouldn’t be talking about the horror unfolding in Gaza on a Substack page devoted to the relationship between life and climate. And I have many pieces on deck I am eager to get to. But I can’t turn away from what is happening there, and my government’s part in it.

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This Ash is Full of Silence

Finally I lay my hands on the table
    and let them curl upward into cups
for the ash, the everywhere-falling ash. 

It drifts through the pronouncements
    of shoulder-to-shoulder presidents
and coats the screens of the evening news.
The survivors on the rubble
    pull out bodies caked in it
and military pundits
sprinkle it like salt
    on their analyses. 
It slips out of the pages of magazines 
    as we read them
and collects on our pillows as we sleep.
It's in our cereal, at the bottom 
    of our coffee mugs, dusting our mirrors.
We make little ovals and look in, hoping
     we won't be changed.