Son Lost in Desert Storm

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At dawn she mourns

her losses, counts

moans of doves

lamenting nests

robbed by jays;

closes the curtains

against the eastern

light that stains

red the vacant white

sheets of his bed.

Elizabeth Burgard

Elegy for a Palestinian Child

1%

She lies, a brown skinned rose,

a tissue paper winding sheet,

a box she rattled in.

Child without breath,

her eyes are made of glass.

She understood,

this quick limbed girl,

things of her world:

the chase of Monarchs,

raucous tumult of barking tree frogs,

* solace of protecting arms.

Silent beyond sound,

she is lowered to her last cradle,

her last mother.

She could not understand

she would smother in a gas mask

issued by an enemy

to guard her from destruction

by a friend.

Tillie Friedenberg