BETWEEN THE CHILD AND THE WIND
Jampa Naphtali Williams

I hold this truth to be self-evident:
No child is my enemy.
The ravening wind that scours history
bears no flag, and no avenging tirade
can drown its force or violence.
I stand between my child and the wind,
and ask that others do the same,
instead of aiming bullets at our kin.
Each child begins at breast,
unless tragedy separates
mother from infant.
No mother, suckling her child,
would take a country or a nation
in exchange for her beloved.
Power is what lost men settle for instead of love,
a paltry thing wrestled from loneliness,
a furious thing grasped in terror.
Power is a twilight, a gloom, a blindness.
But love shimmers beyond it as child
after child is conceived beneath the stars.

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