Staying Power #170: "Here and There"

An original poem-in-progres + BONUS music track

Photo by Marieke Verhoeven on Unsplash

One night, this past week, a house-rattling boom shocked me out of a deep sleep. I sat bolt upright in bed.

My first thought?

“We’re being bombed.”

That chilling experience had its roots in my profound concern about the hostilities in the Middle East. Images of devastation on the ground and missiles in the air haunt both my waking hours and my dreams. Writing this poem was one way that I tried to transmute the terrors of that conflict into life-affirming energy.

After I’d titled the poem, I suddenly remembered that years ago, during the Iraq War, I’d composed and recorded a piano solo of the same name. What inspired that piece of music were the many aspects of life that Americans and Iraqis had in common as human beings.

Writing and making music can also help change things.

I’ve included that solo track as a bonus beneath the poem.

HERE AND THERE
Phyllis Cole-Dai

Here
the bomb
that explodes
at midnight
is not a bomb 
but only thunder
shattering the peace
of windowpanes,
and what remains 
after the blast
is not the debris
of my house
or my town
but only the rubble
of my sleep,
and the fighter jet 
that whines overhead
is not a fighter jet 
but only the trick
of a mind
not yet awake
and striving to 
make sense
of violence
raining down
through the dark
on this place,
so far 
from the home
of the enemy
whose face
is not a face,
whose voice
is not a voice,
whose home
is not a home
but a crater
in the ground,
where much
of everything
that has ever 
mattered
anywhere
was once
everywhere
to be found.

Bonus: “Here & There” (original solo piano track)

From Child of All Earth (solo piano CD, 2007; 15% off in my website store with your Rafter discount code).

The Gentle Nudge

Join other Rafters this week for . . .

• WEDNESDAY: Creatives’ Coffee (Zoom, 4:00-5:00PM Central, at this link)

• THURSDAY: Poetry Pick-Me-Up (Zoom, 12:00-1:00PM Central, at this link)

View the full Raft calendar.