‘Raindrop’ is the program that predicts the casualties & damage of a given bomb in a given area, a guess as to how many the shockwave will whistle through, whether it will reach the wedding party, the child selling whistles, the woman kneeling on a rug. This nameless village is only a spot of ink on a map, yet peering down you see the beautiful tulipiere of the sky turning above, hear the nearby creek’s green thrushsound, so like your mother’s song, how she would sing with clothespins in her teeth, then return through the throng of weightless wind-rippled bodies, still singing. The most we could want is only the courage to make it too costly to someone, & so you bring not her song but her silence to this village, the best you can do, an absence left in you by her absence, which now hovers above the footprints in the dirt, then cocoons the woman & child, her silence like a prayer shawl touched by everyone. Someday soon we’ll meet in the middle, & I’ll guess by the look on your face that you’re the one who brought the silence here, as around us
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mark wagenaar