This Was Not in the News
Chris Ellery
October 6, 2024
Some Israelis were murdered
and some were taken.
Gaza was half destroyed.
Politicians justified the deaths.
Assassinations and recriminations.
Some pagers blew up in Beirut
and then some walkie-talkies.
Netanyahu scolded the UN.
The Ayatollah launched a thousand
missiles, and Bebe shot them down.
This was all in the news.
A second-grade boy named Jack
dressed as a goose for his class play.
His mother made his costume—
white felt feathers, orange felt beak
and feet. He had one line to say
but would not say it on the phone
to his abuela, who could not be there.
This was not in the news.
Abuela picked out a spot
in the columbarium and spent a good
part of the day with her priest
planning the order of service.
She has already forgotten the gospel
they chose and the hymns, but not
her spot in the columbarium,
a sunny spot near the bronze
St. Francis of Assisi.
She has never been to Assisi,
and she will never go.
What comes to her mind
when she thinks of Assisi
is El Greco’s “View of Toledo,”
with a smoky castle, all but invisible,
high above the town in the stormy clouds.
Francis lived there as a boy,
and a blood-sniffing giant lives there now
hiding golden urns in his pantry.
Abuela knows she must wait there,
locked in the pantry, locked
in the dark with so many others.
She has already begun to wait.
This will not be in the news.
She is waiting for the funeral mass,
waiting for the solemn processional,
acolytes and crucifer, waiting
for the cow-bought beans to grow,
waiting for her brave little Jack
with goose feathers under
his friar’s robe. He will climb
through iron clouds to the castle,
outwit the bone-grinding ogre,
take every last golden egg.
Chris Ellery is the author of The Big Mosque of Mercy, a collection of poems based on his extensive travels in the Middle East, including Israel. His most recent book is One Like Silence. He is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, the Fulbright Alumni Association, and the Peace Ambassadors of West Texas.
