Iraq War Grief Daily Witness Day 5

The body of a bomb attack victim is brought to a hospital morgue in Baghdad January 16, 2007. A car bomb and a suicide bomber killed 60 people and wounded 110 more, including many students blown up as they waited for cars to take them home at the entrance to a university in Baghdad, police said.
REUTERS/Kareem Raheem (IRAQ)

N

by Maurya Simon

Noon. I can connect nothing with nothing.

Perhaps even chaos is cause for celebration.

And perhaps the astrologers are right when they chart

one disaster, one propitious night, one happenstance

of glory to the next so they accrue like an alphabet

in the primer of each person's life. I read my horoscope

each day, searching for the solitary clue, the sign

signaling my journey's halt, when I might look up

at last into the stars, connect-the-dots--see, at once,

the bright Virgin standing steadfastly like a silver ship

docked among the midnight swarms, her left hand

beckoning

to me, as if nothing floats between us but the world.