For Al-Abd Saleh Mohammed Al-Kahlout

 


Fog is a body of water

We walk through. It appertains

& makes heavy the sleeves

Of your shirt. From it emerge

In twos canid eyes. It thinks

Across season. I was alone

Once midwinter with a team

Of dogs. Auroras smudged 

The mottled sky. I looked

Off trail & wolves 

Wreathed the willows

& their eyes flashed under

My headlamp & we all kept

Along. I was alive & thrumming.

The wolves never startled

Or cared. & then you were

Displaced, I read. Displaced. 

The place under active erasure.

Under shrouding smoke you walked

Over rubble & ash to find

Reprieve & then came the wolves

Wreathing the clouds. Your family,

Twenty-five of you, displaced 

From the civil registry, they say

Rather than fragmented unto oblivion.

I don’t know. I wish the words

Mattered more. Everyone keeps along.

May we sing your names. 

May we sing at all. 


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