Refugees

       

They walk down small empty streets

with ruined houses.

The clock in the square has no hands.

Rats at the end of the alleys

eat their dead,

the grind of their teeth in the flesh

the only interruption

of the humid afternoon

silence of retreat.

No more drive-by,

not the carts full of plague

long gone to shallow graves

and cried over,

not the car bombings, no Jihad,

only crippled insurgents

left with limbless occupiers

only gray lines of brutal aging

slow lifeless exit,

and in the undisturbed

brick and limestone

everything quietly waiting

for the nocturnal,

the gutters to run clear

and shadows begin to crawl

as innocence tries again

to sneak in, to root,

to find an infant footing