Not on my watch By Erica Parker

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"Not on my watch,"

said the nightman to the clerk.

"I would never allow something like that to happen."

Not on my watch,

     meaning:

     I am doing what I can.

     I wish

     I could do more.

If I were an angel,

the way I think angels might be,

I would cradle the head of people as they die,

lean them into my frame like a chair,

learn to speak every language so that I can whisper

Paul McCartney's words of wisdom into their ear: "Let it be."

If I were an angel, I would want to understand the forgiveness

that waits in fear.

I would visit the living.

I would go to the Rasta crowded in his Florida jail cell,

touch his temples,

slowly circle them,

aid his visions of dread-talk responsibility.  Every word

manifests its own kind of destiny.

I would go to the pale man, in his pinstripe suit:

prison bars he does not see,

hold his hand, show him the Rasta's vision.

It asks him if one man really knows how to judge another.

     Does he

remember the cocoa man with dreadlocks he put away years             ago?

I would drift into the eye of an infant as it absorbs color for the

     first time,

carry the information into the hand of a painter.

Sit for long periods on the mountains of a father's fingers

as they race across his grand piano.

Learn from an African mother how to

carry water on my head for long distances,

sing her songs--the ones that keep one foot in front of the other.

Lick the tears off the cheek of an eight-year-old American boy

as he is told not to cry, lick them up so when he is a grandfather

I can mail him a letter about his life.

Stroke a damp cloth gently across the President's cheek

as he thrashes, twisting sweaty covers,

skin worn raw by the expensive sheets he bought for their

     soft touch.

He has nightmares, his heart bangs, ba-bang, bangs, refuses to

     dream

about the Iraqi mother praying, covering in cloth.

His heart, ba-BOOM, ba-BANG, BANG, thuds out her name for

      god,

her word for home.  Ba-boom, ba-bang, bang: oil pump pounding.

Sit in the cancer ward with the grandmother who knits,

beside the bald cowboy who talks peaches with the nurse.

"I had a good peach from Alabama once, but I'm telling you..."

He likes to tell stories about his orchard in Georgia.

Toss flour at the woman baking in Mexico.

She is wise enough to know that an angel teases her.

She makes the best tortillas of all her sisters,

which is why she is the cook tonight.

Her stained apron protects the flashing colors of her celebration

dress.  Tonight they are marking a new child's conception.  I toss

     flour

so that she will brush at her skin, shake laughter into the recipe.

Run alongside the man in red shorts in his moment of

     endurance. He

focuses on the sound of shoes against track, staggered

     breath.   Fire

inside pushes him into the plastic tape, sweating, raising his

     arms up to

the sky.  "YES... YES... YEESSSSSS!"

Lie naked with new lovers, crosscrossed, playing tic-tac-toe

     with every

body part.

Spread my body upon the hot sand to give a Ghanian boy a

     break from

blistered feet.  In exchange, he will teach me how to be grateful

for      one      meal      every      other      day.

He will teach me how to talk to seashells,

and what it means to live a shoeless life.

Dance in the moonlight with sisters waltzing across a wooden

     dock,

laughing, tripping over plastic chairs, kicking off high heels.

One shoe plops into the lake and the

twirling of women's shadows paint the ripples.

Spin on the ceiling fan in a corporate office as an associate

presents his new location numbers: extra earnings for the boss,

who smiles, pats him on the back.  He rushes

home, new necklace for the wife.

I am with him in his breast pocket, reaching around, embracing

     him,

transporting to him images of local workers,

jobless now that the company is moving.

I show him the swollen eyes

of the young man who will work in the new sweatshop,

trying to feed a village

with a dollar a day.

I will continue my embrace as he watches his wife hang

her necklace among the dozens she cannot choose from.

Crawl into the dirt under the fingernails of the farmer.

Dive with the scientist as she swims

into the underwater cave, looking for the space

where saltwater meets freshwater.  She studies the kind of life

that can survive constant change.

Go to the woman in India,

crying bitterly because her baby has been born a girl.

Then I will understand what it means to be a woman

squatting naked over dirt floor, knuckles clenched in fists of blood,

dripping womb signs a dowry to a husband and

no bread for an old woman's table.

Bait the line for a Colorado fisherman standing along the river

     bank,

his breath caught by the sunrise.

Kiss a mother goodbye with the lips of a boy strapped in

     explosives,

a suicide bomber who knows unending hunger,

decades of lost brothers, a dying hope for cultural salvation.

A desperate action that expresses all he has been taught of

     courage.

I would take his hand.  I would go with him.

Kiss a mother goodbye with the lips of a boy dressed in uniform,

U.S. Army.  A soldier who knows a country that tries for freedom,

a homeland that makes promises.

Will he be prepared to confront the desperate poverty of his

      enemies?

He leaves a mother.  A desperate action

that expresses all he has been taught of honor.

I would take his hand.  I would go with him.

Rest inside a Native sweat lodge.

Listen to prayers of earth, water, fire turned to steam,

every element present in the center of this elders' ring

of bowed heads.

I would stir the coffee of the night watchman, sitting in the

New York Tower lobby, the man who

wears the faded brass-buttoned uniform and remembers the

     names

of everyone in his building, all those who come and go

on their way to me.

If I were an angel, I would understand forgiveness.

I would sit on the other side of fear with

the knowledge of oneness folded

into a soft blue weave draped across my shoulder: padding

for the head of the next member of my family.

--September 11, 2003