Hurting
When there are disasters around the Earth
earthquake, fire, flood,
I pray for someone like myself amid the horror.
She is hurting.
Like myself she is a mother, grandmother
praying to be faithful to her God.
Since two towers quaked
and no flood of water or of tears
could quench that searing fire,
I have been in prayer with other women like myself
hurting
My like-self today lives in a nation called Iraq.
A grandmother,
she has watched a grandson die of leukemia
as I have watched my daughter Ann take Marcus
for the necessary chemo to halt that terrible disease
But in Iraq,
my other self watched her daughter rage with grief
as a blockade
for ten long years
kept the chemo from her Mohammad.
As I know,
she knows
someone who follows jihad
will give his life for jihad.
She knows,
as I know,
soldiers from the USA
will give their lives to protect their faiths and
freedoms.
Will she create a pieta
holding her daughter in her arms as the missiles
come
as I create a pieta
holding her and her daughter in my arms
hurting.
Justine Merritt,
September 24, 2001
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