I Sit in my Garden and Ask

Her days are frantic with searching for food
Mine are full of delicious meals
What can I do what can I do?
Each day she’s listening hard
for the sound of incoming bombs.
My day is walking by the lake,
playing pickleball with friends
What can I do what can I do?
My life is brimming with writing,
with the pleasure of sketching and painting,
with making music and greeting neighbors.
Hers is another day of hiding her children,
one more day of despairing terror.

As I sit in my garden, there’s a soldier
directing a drone that bombs a child
in a hospital in Gaza, in a school in Ukraine.
The tender bodies fly into pieces
while I sit in my garden, asking my question,
what can I do, what can I do.
Armed conflicts on earth today
number one hundred and ten.
I send my peace this afternoon
to one of these places on earth.
I nod my recognition of the pain,
and hum a drop of harmony
to one of these places on our tiny planet.

When the breeze brings roses to my nose,
when all I see is green beauty around me –
I direct the atoms of energy
from each of my satisfactions
to faraway kin in places of war.
As I sit in my garden, the refugees flee on the road
away from everything they know.
I make a moment to nod in recognition
of their hunger and their hurt,
their exhaustion and their grieving daze.
I send my drops of happiness to where
my kin live out their lives this day
in one hundred and ten places of war.
©Susa Silvermarie 2025