days of peace

Ask them and they will tell you.

The women remember the air broken by a harsh sound.

They soon knew what they heard

were sounds they never should have known.

The crack of the date palms, the snap of the orange trees.

Before this, who knew the tearing sound that lemon trees make

as tanks rip them up and run them down?

 

In their past only storms would destroy ancient groves.

 

One old woman grabbed a small branch from a tree that

always gave her shade in the summer, and of course, the fruit.

The shade was gone and it was not the end of a season.

But it was the end of the times she could rest there, sometimes

remember her mother, or hold her grandson on her lap.

This is where many generations of the women before her sat.

Women, always the vulnerable ones, women and the land.

To make people crazy and weak with grief,

this is what an army does on purpose.

Before this, only storms would dare take ancient fig groves down.

 

Will that old woman remember the fig trees or the violence?

Who will whisper the faint changes of the season to her

as the wind through the ancient groves once did?

Days of peace are days you sit with your friends and neighbors.

They are days when you pass around the bowl of fresh fruit

and see the sky through the dappled view of leaves.

 

As we stand here in quiet recognition of what has happened

to this ancient grove, to these women’s lives,

I wonder who will whisper the changes we should make for the next generation

and all the seasons to come. 

Days of peace are the days we should have in abundance

And the faint sounds of morning should be familiar