The White Helmets of Aleppo

One man Stands Beneath his white helmet And demands, Silence. Throughout Aleppo. His stethoscope, He attaches To the dust And listens From his knees. The man has Ten fingers, A dry brush And a pair of pliers To dig like an archeologist. He does not have years, But minutes To search the ruins For toes That wiggle Or mouths That suckle Or bleeding hearts That still beat Like tremors In puddles of plaster. When an apartment building Of ten stories Is bombed By planes Flown by strangers And its hallways and closets And bedrooms And kitchens And stairwells Are pancaked Into a single floor Of wreckage In seconds, There can be tiny Zigzagged Crevices With, but inches of space And pockets of air Left Where Former residents May fill these places With their slippery bodies Poured like liquid Into molds That harden While they wait For a miraculous tap From Above Or Below Or from the Sideways. Sometimes, The plaster and gravel Molds Blink Back With the brown eyes Of a three year old Or the trickle of blood Can faintly be heard Still flowing Under A mother’s skin In And through her veins. To the rubble surgeon, That is like seeing fireworks Or hearing tubas, So, he probes further. Using his fingernails Like scalpels, He unearths An elbow, A shoulder, A chest, The belly, Ankle bones And then, the whole Of the lightning-shaped body Releases in one dusty swoop, Scooped Into both his hands And raised above his head As if on scales And lifted to the emerald sky, The weight of the world Presented to the gods, A broken body And a scarred soul But, yes, Yes, Pried Alive With the first cry of a second birth From a saved person Who’s On No one’s side But for God's.