When You Look Away
A Poem
What do you see when you look away,
blue skies, a calm lake, no tempest of scorn,
no words shot, bullets from a gun,
piercing the soft kernel of a fragile mind?
No hurt, no grief
…when you look away.
Do you see, instead, the hate ricochet,
blood pouring from your own severed dreams,
the despised consequences of others who dare,
to take the happiness that is their due?
No hurt, no grief
…when you look away.
Can you show me too, your distant gaze,
where no one hurts and no-one fears,
showing me the tranquil other-life,
so my spirit too will dwell in peace?
No hurt, no grief
…when you look away.
Does your distant reverie fill a plate,
to satiate hunger’s double pain,
of a starving body digesting its own flesh,
and the emptiness of an un-nurtured soul?
No hurt, no grief
…when you look away.
Protect me from the raging flood,
pull me up, I beg, to higher ground,
before the whirlpool, again, sucks me down.
See my face, just once, in your dreams.
No hurt, no grief
…when you look away.
©Moshe Forman, July 2019
