What price this child

Picture if you will a photo

A photo of a town

A damaged, war torn town

Unrecognisable from any other

This town could be any one of thousands

And probably is

Picture in the centre, filling much of the frame

A building, a house

Broken, falling down

Its original design lost in the aftermath

Of a bomb, or bombs

Dropped by an enemy

The inhabitants had never met

Now picture in the foreground

Poking from out the rubble

A small hand, a forearm

Broken

The colour of the skin indeterminate

Obscured by blood and dust staining its surface

The face of the child unrecognisable

Beneath the debris

This child could be any child

Of any age

Of any gender

Of any race

But one child among millions

Picture all this, if you will

And then call this picture ‘price tag’

For this we are told is the price of freedom

This the price of peace

The death of children

Ours, theirs

Yours

But what price the life of this child

What price this child

And who decides this price of peace

A country whose own children fight

In an army that will kill more of them itself

Through miscalculation

Equipment failure

And human error

Than the enemy will ever see

And their names, too, will become numbers

Tabulation of acceptable loss

But one more price

In the fight for that we cannot win

Through war

But what price the life of this child

And do they think us so unwilling to pay it

That we would not forgo a meal to see once more his smile

That we would not risk the insecurity

Of reducing a military

That cannot protect us

To see her play again

Of limiting a deterrent that does not deter

To hear them all laugh again

But murder is nothing new

War is nothing new

It is a part of us

And has been for as long as our races can remember

And longer

Since man first learned that by bending his knuckles

Curling the tips of his fingers into his palm

He could turn the end of his arm into a club

And no country is without its evils

Its injustice

Its closet full of skeletons

For all colonisation is genocide

All succession, each claim to territorial rights

Is bloodshed

And all conflict gives death to those

Who did not chose the fight

But all I can ask is

What price the life of this child

This life

This potentiality unrealised

Never to run again

Play again

Never to grow

And laugh

And know love

This life extinguished

For reasons not adequately explained

Justified

Or any fault of this young corpse

Lying among the rubble

Its home has now become

It goes so fast

Five years now it’s been

And I wonder why you don’t

Cross my mind almost every day

The memory is still sharp

The loss as painful as it ever was

Perhaps it’s self defence

There are associations

Interests that we shared

Books, movies, TV shows and games

Situations in a story

Reminiscent of our own

Which bring your memory back

Rekindle that ache in my chest

Fuel the tears forming in my eyes

Sometimes it’s when my eyes

Meet yours

In your picture on the

Funeral program fixed firmly

To my fridge

And at those times do we talk

Or I do at the least

But your memory is stark

Sharp

And complete

Your responses to my assertions

My questions

Almost echo in my mind

But this too is but one more

Loss to feel

Five years now it’s been

Since you left us

And I know you didn’t mean to

I try not to hold it against

But the loss is still so sharp that

I wonder why you don’t

Cross my mind almost every day

Perhaps it’s self defence

I've done my part

You ask me how I can justify calling my words poetry

I say I don’t, I have neither the will nor the expertise

You ask me how then can I accept others labelling it so

I reply that my freedom is to write how I will, theirs to decide what it means to them

Then you ask but what of form

I tell you that each product of my pen is structured by my life, follows the form of each experience, shaped by the life it describes, the mind that receives its message

You ask me then but what of rhyme

I respond that every word of every line echoes the call of my soul’s response to the moment they capture

Ah but what, you ask, of rhythm

I explain that each written offering follows the rhythm of my heartbeat, of the song of the universe as it falls on the ears of my soul

And you ask me then to tell you what I think poetry is

And I ask you to tell me what you think it is not