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“Reflected Autumn Light 2 Photograph” by Catherine Lottes |
If I say I love god and hate my brother, I must be a liar.
Roots protrude over knots of weeds
and wildflowers overgrowing the path
to the old bench: knife scars. Initials dotted
with bird shit. Today the ceasefire ended.
Bombs resumed falling on crowded hospitals
where the attacker says the enemy hides
command centers that must be destroyed.
The water’s green-black gloss.
Slanted sun flares across it, flashes onto trees.
Angled, the sun doubles its reflection, blinding me.
For a second my face turns up to the sky
glaring down. If I cannot love my brother
whom I have seen, how can I love god whom I
have not seen? Quickly I turn away.
My eyes burn. Behind them the sun repeats
on my eyelids, retina, optic nerve.
The riverbank is bathed in golden shimmers,
shaking the leaves, making old branches dance.
Pockets of air vibrate without breeze or wind,
shaking me. Shifting reflections fracture into
prisms of light flowing far away to the rubble,
the dead, the injured, the taken, shaking every
stripped-open heart that’s part of it all, the pulsing
downstream, the cross-stream ripple, the light
refracted in this instant, as if the river upended
and we were all under water.