by Olga Dugan
For JB and Sherry
Some moments fall over us
like the blue, lavender, jade,
and everlasting-brown blankets
of Middle Eastern skies at dusk.
Lunch time. My civilian relief
unit made our way into the war-
worn city with bottled water,
rations, even candy. Children
chased the dust from our truck
once we stopped for distribution.
That’s when I saw her. A little
girl. Barefoot. Burlap dress
hinging her dusty frame. Black hair,
wind-danced, aging her cheeks.
A hungry look, but dignity regaling
brown eyes. She stood only a few
kicks of sand away, so I stepped out
to meet her, boot to toe, on the brink
of peaceful exchange. Returning
her smile, I offered a bag of sweets.
Through a wide yawn of invisible
fence: Here, I promised, got gummy
bears, sour patch kids from the States.
Speak English? Get nothing but
a shaking head. Okay, candy you
eat like this . . . She imitated a
universal language; pale lips going,
“O.” Her face bloomed petals
of smiles. Here’s more; it’s okay.
Only took a minute of this bone-
dry day under the sun’s relentless
attack to register the candy
rainbow crashing against her fist.
Why not reach for it? Why plunk
ruddy fingers into a pocket, draw
out a little fist she turned palm up
to reveal a pebble? But the sandy
bauble began to match her eyes.
That dignity. She was offering a
piece of land for a rainbow and
its promise. We both ate well, I
wrote in a letter to my husband
and girls back home, still full
on the gravity of our transaction.
Now, at sunset’s dancing glow,
calm sweeps dunes into a thinning
slit of horizon; it’s Thanksgiving
at my house on the other side
of the world. But a year into my
tour, I don’t feel the same longing
I had before. No, hitting my bunk,
I forget even war; rotted ovenbird
diminishing, not nourishing, our ribs
like the choice fare of human kindness
the little girl and I shared that day
at a table otherwise set for enemies.
About the photographer: Pat Tompkins is an editor in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her essays and poems have appeared in The Bark, Thema, Modern Haiku, and other publications.
Truly beautiful. Thank you!
Thank you for your kind words, Lesley!