by Tricia Knoll *I wore a peace symbol bandana on my arm when I received a professional degree from the Yale graduate school in 1970. I marched with candles in California, put my butt down in an administrator’s office at Stanford. I did not know then the extent of my privilege. We walked. We assembled, chanted simple words to a drumbeat. We saw villages destroyed, lives ripped from ancestral homes. Some of our parents agreed with what we were doing, but not all. Not mine. Despite the deaths, the endlessness of destruction, hopelessness, despair. I began to teach high school and met refugees. The first to arrive spoke French, English and Vietnamese. A teen described the airlift from the embassy. How he left his white dog behind. Later I met Hmong and Mien whose lives started harder. I cannot assume that to be pro-Palestinian is to be an anti-Semite. I’m old enough to know that flinging slurs gets us nowhere. I cry over young children starving to death in Gaza, mothers giving birth in rubble. The clashing words of our leaders seem weak. Money speaks, what must say do not kill any more innocents. Insist money be spent for humans wrapped inside carnage to live, eat, shelter, sleep, learn, grow. Open the walls to food, good food. Arresting the protesting young enflames. Horses, soldiers in camo, zip ties. Gaza is filled with tent cities. Torn tents. I live in Vermont. My electeds oppose spending more money for lethal weapons for Israel. I thank them. When we hear support for Israel is ironclad—that must not mean only bombs and guns, the weapons of metal. Our mettle must stand for the children, the men and women who have nowhere to go, yet hear threats that more and worse is yet to come.
Thank you to this poet for this poem's long view -- back and forward -- it is so balanced, earnest and still passionate.