every Palestinian child killed
is someone I will never know
you might say
I wouldn’t know them anyway
because before they’d have grown
I’ll have died, & yet
we might have exchanged
fleeting gusts of air, theirs
blown here from Rafah in Gaza, mine
blown there from small town Vermont
they bombed into fragments
picked off by snipers
skin & bones in a mother’s arms
while I slow & slip & sink
& succumb to old age
every you & I, we are the same