A Vanishing Act

We exist in ruins, in the dust.

An eye blinks

and the world goes black.

What once could be recovered has now vanished.

Gaza is a prison camp, an open hole beneath the stars.

Children play in the rubble.

Isis bulldozes the ancient city of Nimrud;

its stone panels 
have been defaced,

the walls of its ancient palace crushed
(a human head is severed from the body

of a winged bull).

The ocean fills with plastic bottles

that some day will return to us;

their labels gone, the messages inside lost.