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?