Where No One Counts

When will we count the dead in Gaza?

Those buried in named graves we know, 

all the tens of thousands of them,

those buried in the rubble,

the disappeared 

with no one left to name them,

are still unknown

uncounted.

Then the other Disappeared,

prisoners of war

if it were a war,

but with only the rights

of terrorists

who have no rights at all

in this unequal conflict

that some call ‘war’.

And how can we count the injured in Gaza

when there are no hospitals left

and its people don’t count

so no one can count those numbers.

and perhaps no one will

in a country where people don’t count.

Now the starved and starving 

have joined them,

the bags of baby bones

the unaccounted numbers

of intentional famine

in Gaza where still

no one counts.

https://wordcitylit.ca/2024/10/11/3-poems-by-lynn-white/