There Are Some Questions Without Answers

Late March on Alaska’s Gulf coast,

a day of sun recast to a scrim

of clouds showering snow onto

mountainsides of hemlock and Sitka

spruce, every bough a white shelf

bending under wet weight.

Chestnut-backed chickadees flit

through branches, fly to my palm,

a now-familiar source of seeds.

One by one, they carry them

into the trees, stuff them into bark

crevices, behind tufts of lichen.

I watch them, think of the news

I read the day before we left

town, the accompanying photo

flaring in my brain—

somewhere in Gaza, at this very

moment, a woman lies sobbing

over the bloody body of her child,

her husband, her mother, her sister,

her father, her brother, her friend.

The tiny grip of a wild bird’s

feet pricks my finger, dislodges

an unanswerable question—

how did I come to stand among

tranquil trees, weighted only with

snow, in the company of chickadees

while she lies crumpled on stony

ground, the tonnage of her grief

pressing down with no end in sight?