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On the Shore & Refugees

Poems by Debra Bennett

Car headlights in poem by Sandra sortwell makau

On the Shore

Once again, to the shore
pebbles and plastic wrappers
in-drawing, withdrawing breath of wind,
that slow moaning of foghorns:
our common humanity washed up,
yet again.

(Yesterday, or last week,
or last year
in some other place, another war erupted,
children shaking inside
makeshift shelters, bodies bagged.
Blame flies like blood: whose fault?)

Here, fog lifts and on the sand:
a few stubbed out cigarette butts,
sand scraped, scoured
by two stumps
laboriously pushed together,

someone’s half-eaten sandwich
unclaimed yet
by screaming seagulls or those crows watching,
shiny eyes, scavengers
darting down for a bite of bread, a bite of meat,
or juice, blood, bones.

On my way home,
in the grocery store,
the news on someone’s phone chatters:
atrocities, rage and revenge
on both sides.

And I’m thinking about how, somewhere or
over there, on both sides,
today or yesterday, or last month
someone’s child died.

Refugees: A Testament on New Year’s Day

I sit on a park bench alone
beneath a drift of leaves;
a scuffle of rubbish rushes up with the wind:
scraps of red plastic,
crumpled paper hats, masks:
a smell in the air,
singed and bitter.

I sit on this park bench,
New Year’s Day.

And have I sat here forever alone listening
to the cacophony of branches scratching
the bare cold sky?—
—shreds of broken glass, tramped earth,
scorched paper rising with gusts of wind,
those raucous midnight voices
finally stilled into sleep
the clown faces melted now:
waxen colours running down
the ruined faces, red and blue then
purple bruises:
our human facades sliding away
exposing raw skin, bald bare eyes.

New Year’s Day, a park bench
the swings emptied now
the children gone away.
And I wonder: will we sit here forever,
on benches and mountains,
on beaches and deserts,
always,
a million Marys mourning
the terrible waste,
the bruised flesh,
the broken bodies of loved ones.

And, again and again will we watch
as the heavy boots
march and stamp. Again.
Now.
And, again,
that trail of tired refugees
crawling over the inevitable mountains or
deserts,
sliding into oceans,
those young faces grown old, those
old hands poking among make-shift fires:

what wreckage, what loss, the blackened
scavenged homes, the dead flung like rubbish
into heaps—and will some god not
rise up, weeping and raging
will the blood of generations not
erupt from the earth,
will the sky itself not
thunder out against the sight of
the emptied eyes of the quiet children,
the bent young women mourning along mountains,
the old ones stumbling again and again upon those
lurches of cracks and rocks:
another trail, more dust and hunger
even the fear repeating itself like the bursts
of distant shells—
—even the fear has gone on so long, it’s almost stale.

Yes, we sit on benches, stumps, rocks, mountain sides,
bent over our broken ones, young and old,
fear and greed.

The ones in their high desks, faces, fingers folded
into a comfortable complacency, smiling
while the children die.

Yet, witnesses, so many of us,
always and forever, together and alone, age after age,
watching and listening as the leaves scuttle and scratch
bare cold earth, or sands smoulder another
bare bright sky,

until the sky is finally falling, the
winds blowing away deserts,
listening to those Ones.
Forever here, forever gone away.
New
Little one, small sun wrapped
in pink blankets
features surfacing slowly, rising up
from unknown waters, the eyes still dark
with an old knowing,

your tiny fists clutching
the drawstrings of life: they will pull you in
tighter and tighter into a necessary forgetting
as they do all of us.

Still, for a while you will be lost
in the hubbub of life, the noise of traffic
signs directing, warning, suggesting,
sometimes the finger-tapping
gum-chewing boredom,
lines steaming, stuttering, stopping.
And all of that.

(Hopefully, you are one
welcomed with wide open arms into
landscapes only
imagined by too many others).

Still—I wish for you a few
handfuls of pure love
the sunlight glinting through bits of
soft ripe gold in your palm:
remembrance of where it all began
before the forgetting.

About the Author – Debra Bennett

Debra Bennett

Debra Bennett was an Early Childhood Educator for many years.She has published poetry and fiction in various magazines, journals, and anthologies: The New Quarterly, The Capilano Review, Federation of BC Writers, Blank Spaces, Open Mind Quarterly, and others. She has been on the short list in a number of contests: WOW, Brilliant Flash Fiction, The Vancouver Isle Poetry Collective. Debra Bennett lives on Salt Spring Island, BC with her husband. She is a mom and grandma.

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