This morning, Beirut. The satellites bring us
a dust cloud that just was a neighborhood.

Still, a few smudge-faced children. They look
like they’ve learned, quick, not to cry.

Still, it’s easy, at even this distance,
to see the wrecked world in their eyes.

Though I might decide to click from that site
and go take my usual walk—it’s balmy

here for mid-April, and I know
where an osprey has perched on the dead

birch where creek opens to bay—I might
still be inclined to carry that image,

the sudden puffed building where I’m sure
a grandpa would sit on the living room floor

and play with the little one. It’s likely
I’ll keep that in mind while I watch the raptor

steady its gaze from high over water
and ready to dive for the flash of its prey.

I want to believe our heart is an organ
of choice—that we’re not determined

as that magnificent bird, nor fated
as the sleek fish it will seize. Maybe

it’s only because I once had my own grandpa
and was that little one, that I can picture

the game on the rug in the musty apartment
before it is struck, the boy rubbing static

up with his knees, the old man receiving
that small shock of their touch—and I can

daydream the distant soldier about to press
launch bending the trajectory of his hand.