Yotzeret Ha’olam,
She who created the world
Allah Al Rahim,
most merciful, most compassionate, most gracious
shelter for our tears,
home of our dreams,
teacher of our children,
teacher of our own lost, breaking, shattered hearts.
Our safety is gone–
whatever slim hope of safety
we thought we had before last week.
Please, protect us:
help the father whose house was destroyed
and is on his knees
searching for the lentils
under the rubble
for his children.
Give abundant, clean, sustaining water
to the pregnant woman
who passes water only every two days now.
Shelter the young women
wrenched from bliss to captivity
in spaghetti string tank tops.
Protect the trembling outraged terrified shutdown
incisive determined hearts,
dreaming of safety and protection
creating fear, displacement, loss
for another person’s beloved.
Bring shelter, comfort, wisdom, rest
to the aching places
in my 3 am brain
that whirl only to predicting, imagining the worst–
a gash in the earth,
an absence where a proud civilization
invited each other to tea;
a thirst quenched with microbe-laden water
to multiply in the bellies of babies,
fear of the studies of telomere damages
to the third generation.
Help our nighttime wakings
become sites of radical imagination and creativity.
Help us use these blasted cement parts
to make a tower, a mural, a clinic.
