Enter Children

The city could be choked with wreckage, 
and still the children would clear
a patch for a football field.

Even when hills of debris 
line the street,
the children will pick up a ball, 
split the survivors into two teams.

In the sky is a wrinkle of smoke, 
a fluttering plane—
and on what is left of the walls 
are the names of everyone
the rubble still shrouds.

When the ball soars
through the mutilated streets,
the skinny legs would never suspect

a missile could ever find them—
would never suspect evil
could enter their world.