A Safe Place

a poem

Photo by Noah Josue on Unsplash

Listen to an audio recording of A Safe Place:

A Safe Place

Show me a safe place
beneath a bright, cloudless sky
where no Israeli war planes,
no swarms of quadcopters fly.

Find me a safe place
to escape this holocaust
of rubble, ruins and the last remains
of the martyrs we have lost.

Dig me a safe place
so that I can bury the bones
of my family, my friends, my neighbours,
their broken corpses cold as stones.

Take me to a safe place,
one that’s nice, clean and warm 
so that who’s still left of my family
will have shelter from the next storm.

Build me a safe place
like a fortress on a high hill
with walls no army can scale or bomb,
my family, my people to kill.

Make me a key to this safe place,
a fine house with many bright rooms,
and a garden where olive and orange trees
burst into fragrant, sweet bloom.

Let me stay forever in this safe place
where I will have my own bed,
or is there nowhere a safe place
until I lie, buried among the dead?

No, let us turn this blood-soaked land into a safe place
from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea
so that every child, woman and man,
Muslim, Christian and Jew can 
live in freedom, peace, and equal dignity.

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