All over the world, mothers
are awake; in Tel Aviv,
Kahn Unis; Texas;
praying that the children they
must send out into the world
return home to them;
and are not bombed to bits
in the town square; not captured
and held in tunnels in Gaza;
not arrested in LA; not sent
in shackles to South Sudan
or El Salvador;
not swept away by floodwaters;
not mowed down at school
by an AK47.
As mothers lie awake in the dark
of soft bedrooms, or makeshift huts
or beneath the bomb-lit sky,
the earth turns on its axis; the entire
planet hums with the energy of these
sleepless mothers.
