I Wish I'd Written This

I Want to Hold Your Hands: 

A poem for the people of Syria

by Barbara Ehrentreu

I want to hold your hands
Parents of children lined up
in burlap bags
whose joy and laughter have
been snuffed forever by
a ruthless dictator who
cares more for power than
for the lives of his people

And I want to hold the hands of you
who escaped over the borders
holding your children's hands
Wanting only to find a safe haven
and finding instead a city of people
who like you want to have
a normal life for themselves
Instead milling around in a refugee camp
where a tent is your home and you
must depend on the goodness of others
to feed and clothe you and your family

I want to hold your hands and not shove
bombs onto your war torn country

I want to virtually hold you and say

it's okay for the moment

You would be safe with me

For weapons have no place in

my world

Yet people hurt by bullets or bombs or gas

Innocent of the crime
of being alive and on the wrong side

must live in fear that soon

my country will sear your souls

with senseless weapons and soon you

will be witnessing more death

Only this time the death will come from

the outside and you will lay your hope

n the street and bury it with the bodies

of your children.

Barbara Ehrentreu posted this poem on her facebook page on September 5th, in response to the terrible news from Syria about the gassing of civilians including children. I wanted to feature it immediately, but there were other posts which needed to take precedence. 

Barbara, originally from Brooklyn, New York, now lives in Stamford, Connecticut. I first came across her work during the annual April Poem A Day challenges at Poetic Asides, hosted by Robert Lee Brewer. Now we are in a poets' group on facebook together. Her interview with Robert on her blog, Barbara's Meanderings, begins with her reminiscences about being shy and overawed when she began participating at Poetic Asides ... until she felt that sense of a poetic community which we here at Poets United also know.

As well as a poet, she is a retired teacher, a Children's Author and a Young Adult Author. Her YA novel, If I Could Be Like Jennifer Taylor, is available in both paperback and Kindle editions. You can read about it on Goodreads. As a blogger, she uses the name lionmother, and she is indeed the mother of a grown daughter. Her passionate concern for the young is obvious, and although many were appalled and distressed by the situation in Syria, it doesn't surprise me that she was the one who wrote the poem I'd like to have written about it. The compassion in it touched me deeply.

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