In a map of the Heavens
I found your house
as it was before
the genocide
a green table
some olives in
a red bowl
books leaning
this way and that
your wife writing
nearby
Well before your children
whose voices played
around us grew silent
and were erased from
the text of their future
If I could get there on
my own
would you two still be
alive to welcome me
in the rubble of your
memory
as a fellow poet
deserving your grief
and anger
as a stranger who meant
you no harm
but allowed others to kill
your prayers in plain sight
of my life in words
Perhaps my friends
forgive me
one day out of many
Beau Beausoleil is a poet and activist based in San Francisco, California. His most recent chapbook is called War News (daily poems responding to the first three months of the genocidal war in Gaza), which appeared as a free online ebook published by Agitate! Journal. Forthcoming is a second volume in the War News series, War News II (11/9/23 - 6/3/24), to be published momentarily by fmsbw press in San Francisco.
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