"Battlefield Without Borders"
Iraq Poems by David Smith-Ferri
Haley's Publishing produced a volume of poetry by David Smith-Ferri in February, 2007. David wrote two thirds of the poems while in Iraq after encounters with Iraqi people, in a wide-range of settings – from hospitals to homes to bomb sites. The book sold out in four months, and in November, 2007, Haley’s published a second edition of the book, with twelve new poems and a new foreword by Kathy Kelly. This book is being sold to raise funds for Direct Aid Iraq, which provides urgent medical assistance to some of the 2.25 million Iraqis who’ve fled their country and now live in Amman, Jordan or Damascus, Syria.
In July, 1999, David visited Iraq for the first time, as part of an eight-member fact-finding delegation organized by the Chicago-based group, Voices in the Wilderness. Learn about his experiences and inspirations by visiting the About pages of this website. Read some of his poems on the Poetry pages, and consider purchasing the book for $14, all of which goes to Direct Aid Iraq.
A poem:
Standing There
After the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi
June, 2006
Carried on radio waves,news of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death reached mewith unexpected force and in an unlikely place:a Buddhist monastery.It is a place where violence, in any form, is forbidden entrance,and where vast internal spaces are mirroredby the boundless natural landscape.Nuns and monks, in simple robes, walk and work.Radiant peacocks and peahens strut.Students, aged six to eighteen, study in a schoolthat emphasizes characterand asks How can you be of service to the world?Above it all, like guardians, massive oaks and sycamoresspread their arms.
The news arrived as I fastened my safety beltand suddenly I felt anything but safer.Two five hundred pound bombs, a radio voice said,enough explosive bite in their jaws to swallow a houseand leave a house-sized crater in a date palm orchard.Like a meteor, I thought. Sudden, suicidal, alien.
Al-Zarqawi, the disembodied voice of terrorist threats,his actual body, broken and bloody, now a war trophy.
Who doesn’t want to see an end to terror in Iraq,an end to exploding cars and baby carriages,to looking for missing relatives in morgues?
I stepped out of my car.Standing there,I more than half expected those great trees to swoon,the ground to turn momentarily fluid.
Days before, Rachael had told a story.
It seemed simple then.
bug flew into my eye while I played soccer.
For a full minute,
I stumbled across the field, half-blind, frantically blinking,
trying to free the bug,
holding my big, clumsy fingers at my side.
It was hilarious.
Teammates told me ‘Just kill it,’
but I laughed and blinked
and the bug broke free.
Standing there alongside the sycamores,I could not reconcile the two images:on the one hand, the Fighter Falcon and its ferocious bombsfinding their targetand on the other the foolish fourteen-year old, fumbling,finding another way.
Standing there outside the Buddhist elementaryand secondary schools,I couldn’t help wonder which image would flower,which image would seed our future:the grown men in the F-16 following orders to killor the girl-woman, following a voice only she can hear.
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