2
September 2015
Most of us saw those photographs.
Washed up small
sneakers first, face down
in the blunt sand, forehead
lapped
by the torpid, receding
surf,
a drowned
three-year-old slumps against
the gritty diminishing
edge
of one flotsam-caked Turkish
beach,
one among others.
Waterlogged,
red t-shirt and blue
shorts cling
to his numb frame. Officially
compassionate, a
policeman
puts on a pair of
latex gloves
and grimly lifts the
child’s slack form
away. Somewhere along
the strand,
his drowned mother and
brother wait
their turns. There can
be no refuge,
no coming home, no
going back
for them now that a capsized
world
sees fit to care. Who
can gather
their overwhelming
remainder
into our staid human
embrace?
