Broken
Tonight’s spiritual lesson in justice is given
to two siblings holding pieces of one’s broken cookie—
the elder, the transgressor; the younger, the bereft owner.
Tears flow. Threats are made. Violence seems likely.
Howling accusations of It’s Not Fair, they need intervention—
gently, I suggest caring, not cruelty—
maybe sharing the cookie that is left.
In my news feed today are the latest details of another
Israeli military assault on Gazan families waiting for aid
Along with images of a hostage whose bones bear slack skin
from hunger, help overdue and pathetically insufficient.
In my anguish over my children and their children and all children,
I step outside to cry. Instead, I scream a speech at Netanyahu,
whose nickname Bebe sounds like baby, which sickens me.
You, I shout, you whose aging mind has lost the memory
of your grandparents’ torture as bone-thin children,
a truth once burned into your brain,
your heart seared with the words, Never Again.
You, you who now breaks the Mosaic Law of your country,
the ancient code inherited from Hammurabi of proportional justice.
No reasonable righteousness results from snipers or starvation.
Nowhere in the Torah is a judge’s call for “a life for an eye.”
…but no rabbi, you. Instead, a leader who has become a hitler,
whipped into the power-poisoned idea of an ultimate solution.
And of Tikkun? Nothing you are doing will “heal the world,”
except ending this massacre. God and humanity demand it.
Gaza deserves it!!
Done, depleted, I step back inside, wiping my tears.
My grandchildren offer me their one unbroken cookie.
written by Anne McCrady, 2025
AUDIOLINK: SoundCloud
Poet with a Press Pass is Produced by InSpiritry
Poet With a Press Pass 