Some realities drive us to our knees
and since I was there
already
before my altar
I unwrapped and lit
the beeswax candles
I acquired for you.
My hope is you have never heard
the story of Hansel & Gretel
the trail of bread crumbs
the witch’s cages
filled with children;
the big black pot
and the cooking fat.
Never overheard elders
whisper of foreign customs
that honor
capture of children
and their sacrifice.
The lump of terror
I feel in my own heart
must be magnified
in yours.
In this cage,
seeing how many there are of you,
where would you sleep? And how?
I ask myself this, as I toss and turn.
Remembering too, the great Winnie Mandela
who endured almost a year
of solitary confinement
in a South African prison.
Three ants became her friends
as she used a bucket
like the one I see you have
for night waste (the bottom)
and for food (the lid).
When she emerged from prison
a frightfully different woman,
few South Africans
appeared to consider
the isolation, the humiliation, and the company
she had kept.
What must you think
of us, little ones?
Grownups powerless
to get you out.
What must you feel
as day by day goes by
without parents or community
(a burnt offering that perhaps you witnessed;
as fire rained from the sky)
coming to claim you?
Until
now it is only
awareness
of the
utter
brokenness
of your small lives
that regularly
comes
to visit you.
Let us consider the grown-ups who forced these children into a cage, and send them collectively, around the planet, all our thought. Recognizing as we do so that this was not necessarily their idea. What would we do?