Robert Trezise Jr. | + Follow Poet |
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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.

Copyright © Robert Trezise Jr. | Year Posted 2017

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