Guantanamo

I break like a stone

torn on the wind

through endless turns

of heat and cold.

Will they ever end,

these forces

peeling me in layers?

I am shattered.

All I’d needed and held dear, gone.

Yet I remain.

Fear, terrible fear,

of uncertain violence

and what these people will do next,

fills my days.

How can I go on?

How can I be stripped bare,

yet have so much of myself?

How can this place,

with its forced intimacies and impositions,

with its denial of my faith

and borderline tortures,

make me more than I was?

The answer lies in this small circle of vastness,

where, shrunk to essentials,

I follow the God of my Fathers

beneath a sky domed clearer

than ever I’d imagined.