and it fills my head, drawing
me into the curling soft petal
of this flower on my table.
Today is Tuesday, and my world
fills with the smells
of rose perfume. It is hard to
tell myself that the open hole
I see on the T.V. news is filled
with the stench of hundreds of bodies.
How, I ask myself, am I supposed
to feel, if I cannot smell
the rotting flesh, if no one
connected to me dies in this
civil war an ocean away?
Empathy and compassion become
companion words for the T.Ve.
coverage of mass deaths,
while I sit drinking red wine.
(c)Nancy Powell 2007
from How Far Is Ordinary
Mindworm Press, Chesapeake, VA
No comments:
Post a Comment