In memoriam Rachel Corrie, murdered in Gaza, March 16, 2003
The shriek of a metal blade cutting steel
was not, this evening, the sound of a Caterpillar D-9 bulldozer, built to destroy houses;
it was the mating call of a barn owl in the top of the palm at the corner, and then again,
and then a quieter reply from somewhere among the pines
and then again steel-slicing shrieks
(Owl, I know that hunger!)
It was nothing like the song of that starling Mozart wrote about to his father—
the one he taught to whistle a tune from his G-major piano concerto, correctly
except for replacing a natural with a sharp.
I lay in bed wandering from owl to Mozart
among night-thoughts, not getting up,
knowing I will never be Mozart sitting up by candlelight
into the early morning, hearing the piano and flute introduce the theme
into his head full of oboes, bassoons, and horns.
No, I lay thinking of hungry farmworkers in Trumpist America,
afraid to meet the food caravan in Salinas,
thinking how lucky they are not to be in Netanyahu-ridden Gaza
where the crime of hunger is now punished with death.
What use to remember Rachel Corrie, standing between the dozer and somebody’s home
her feet sliding as the driver kept pushing the growing mound of earth toward her
until she disappeared? Only then
did he slowly back up, wait, and slowly lift his scoop.
Patrick Daly lives in Menlo Park, California. Recently retired, he has spent a a lifetime of lunch hours writing poetry, fiction, and essays. His poem "Words" was a poem of the year in the New Statesman. His first full-length collection is Grief and Horses (Broadstone Press 2021).
