I wore a peace symbol bandana on my arm
when I received a professional degree
from the Yale graduate school in 1970.
I marched with candles in California,
put my butt down in an administrator’s office
at Stanford. I did not know then the extent
of my privilege.
We walked. We assembled, chanted
simple words to a drumbeat. We saw
villages destroyed, lives ripped from
ancestral homes. Some of our parents
agreed with what we were doing, but
not all. Not mine. Despite the deaths,
the endlessness of destruction,
hopelessness, despair.
I began to teach high school and met
refugees. The first to arrive spoke
French, English and Vietnamese.
A teen described the airlift from the embassy.
How he left his white dog behind. Later
I met Hmong and Mien whose lives
started harder.
I cannot assume that to be pro-Palestinian
is to be an anti-Semite. I’m old enough
to know that flinging slurs gets us nowhere.
I cry over young children starving to death
in Gaza, mothers giving birth in rubble.
The clashing words of our leaders seem weak.
Money speaks, what must say do not kill
any more innocents. Insist money be spent
for humans wrapped inside carnage to live,
eat, shelter, sleep, learn, grow. Open
the walls to food, good food.
Arresting the protesting young enflames.
Horses, soldiers in camo, zip ties. Gaza
is filled with tent cities. Torn tents.
I live in Vermont. My electeds oppose spending
more money for lethal weapons for Israel.
I thank them. When we hear support for Israel
is ironclad—that must not mean only bombs
and guns, the weapons of metal. Our mettle
must stand for the children, the men and women
who have nowhere to go, yet hear threats
that more and worse is yet to come.
Tricia Knoll, an aging Vermont poet, understands what drives campus protests. Her poetry collections often focus on eco-poetry (One Bent Twig) or personal responses to feminism and privilege (How I Learned to be White and The Unknown Daughter).
