I’m forever living between Aprils.The air here smells of jacarandas and lime;it’s sunset before I know it. I’m supposedto rest, but that’s where the children live.In the hot mist of sleep. Dream after dream.Instead, I obsess. I draw stars on receipts.Everybody loves the poem.It’s embroidered on a pillow in Milwaukee.It’s done nothing for Palestine.There are plants out West that emerge only after fires.They listen for smoke. I wrote the poemafter weeks of despair, hauling myselflike a rock. Everyone loves the poem.The plants are called fire-followers,but sometimes they grow after the rains. At night,I am a zombie feeding on the comments.Is it compulsive to watch videos?Is it compulsive to memorize names?Rafif and Ammar and Mahmoud.Poppies and snapdragons and calandrinias:I can’t hear you. I can’t hear you under the missiles.A plant waits for fire to grow.A child waits for a siren. It must be a child.Never a man. Never a man without a child.There is nothing more terriblethan waiting for the terrible. I promise.Was the grief worth the poem? No,but you don’t interrogate a weedfor what it does with wreckage.For what it’s done to get here.