Not in My Backyard

by Lorri Ventura


The woven chaise lounge creaks its protest
As I shift my weight
While turning the page of the book I’m reading

The backyard offers a symphony
A Carolina wren serenades from its perch on a nearby deck rail
Chickadees excitedly announce their discovery of a full bird feeder
And mourning doves coo a conversation

Overhead, the sky is a graph of condensation trails
Transforming me into a vertex
For jets flying to and from
Boston and Providence

As I gaze up at the cerulean sky
Its puffy clouds part
And spotlight my sister in a migrant camp
Two days without food or water
Blistered lips and feet
Desiccating in scorching sun
Waiting, waiting, waiting
For a court date to hear her asylum petition

Peering past the dust at our nation’s border
I see a barefoot sister in Gaza
Stumbling through bombed-out ruins
Of the hospital where she delivered her firstborn
Just seven days earlier.
She cannot find her baby.

Further ahead the clouds reveal
A sister in Ukraine
Formerly a school teacher
She now works 14-hour days
As a boiler operator
Dreaming of the day 
When her school is rebuilt and reopened
And her husband is home from war.

From the comfort of my solitary paradise
Tears stagger down my cheeks
As I squint up at my sisters
I pray that the peace that caresses me in my backyard
Can somehow touch them.


* * * * *

Lorri Ventura is a retired special education administrator living in Massachusetts. Her poetry has been featured in AllPoetry, Mad Swirl, Parapraxis, Quabbin Quills, and Red Eft Review. She is a three-time winner of Writing in a Woman's Voice's Moon Prize.