I am a dizzy man trapped in a tilt-a-whirl,
a compass in an iron mine.
The North Star offers help. It says
it never sets on Gaza. Or here.
You just can’t see me in the daylight, it says,
but I see you spinning—
and the hollow bones of famine there.
And you are right, the star says. Gaza
is not yours to dream,
and your imagination failed when
you couldn’t foresee mother’s milk gone dry,
the streets strewed with the spent flesh
of poets and teachers and sitties—
and an age-mate of your grandchild Re Re.
Do you recall when Re came from playing
and panted “I’m starving”? That’s when
you knew: Her plump cheeks
and un-shattered bones are just
how the Earth turns. And by that I mean:
You know who feeds the grist to the stones
and who is ground to dust,
who crooks the wheel and who is crushed.
The best time, the North Star says, to take
your hand off the crank was yesterday.
The second best is today.
–
Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, and a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have appeared Whale Road Review, Abandon Journal, and Innisfree, among others.
