A Poem

Refugees

They stood tall against the bush

because the forest was too thick to see through.

Watering cans filled with good intentions,

they whispered, “Don’t depend on the mountains

to sing answers disguised as hymns.”

They knew better than to take the middle path.

“Could you say the birds led you the wrong way?”

The youngest stood apart and wrote in the dirt:

“Would you skim the borders of the other

direction, to taste the lies the rivers weep?”

Would you see that gold has made you a fool?

Would you test the cloud’s path against the horizon?

If you met a boy who wrote

his dreams in the language of the stars,

would you press your fingers

that were stained with the blood

of wit against his temples?

Or would you ask him to sit?

And see how he would taste

the difference in the mountain’s tears?