Annabelle
I’ve been seeing signs for their meetings
since school started: kids
at sewing machines, kids
outside tin shacks, kids
weaving carpets, kids
bent over in fields; underneath,
the words Do you care?
Yesterday, I finally found the nerve
to go to the meeting
in the small room
with no windows
behind the boiler
in the basement.
Mr. Dawe wears cargo pants
with a hundred pockets,
sandals, and t-shirts
with slogans like Ban the bomb
and Make love, not war, and
his gray hair is a skinny ponytail
down his back.
When I walk in, he says
Welcome, comrade,
and the five kids sitting
in a circle on the floor
laugh and say hello
and I have never felt
so welcome in my life.
Mr. Dawe talks with his hands,
waving them around
like he is conducting
an orchestra; we are
the musicians, rehearsing
a score, making plans
for a booth on child labour
and the war in Iraq.
Why not plant two flowers
with one seed? Mr. Dawe asks
and I think how, if my mom
had said that, she’d have used
the one about killing birds
with a single stone.