Lives

I have seen so many in the camps die,

           flicked away like so many cigarette butts.

                                                          —Harry Wu

          Who, if I cried out, would hear me in

          All the ranks of the angels?

         —Rilke

The cigarette butts lying on the steps,

on the red brick steps in the rain

are not lives.  Fallen

into the ivy, into the flower pot full of rain,

how could they be lives?  Do the angels know

this confusion exists?

The papery bougainvillea blossoms float

and fall on the car's windshield. 

The wind gathers its force to assault the birch leaves

and they fall,

onto the driveway, the wet earth,

the rose bush still with its tall and single rose.

What are lives?

They wait in long lines

for the showers that are not showers

for the machine gun that is a machine gun.

When the bullets strike

they do not even cry out.

They grow the first threads of beard,

take the first kiss.  

They sit in a semicircle in the firelight, asking

what are lives?

Are the angels listening?

What if they are not listening?

Does the rose rear itself,

does it labor singly into the light,

to get attention? 

Does it stand in the rain and wind to be saved?

If no angel plucks it was it never a rose?

The dog comes out onto the step,

the little girl comes out.

The car starts, the wipers flick away

the papery blooms, so many.

Patrick Daly