My foot strides again, over ripped municipal cobbles, missiles.
Oh, that we had time for civic pride, dear Gaza.

Catching up my mind’s eye,
breath-taking, 
aghast, imagination fails.
And the non accommodating cafe chairs now suffice;
for although reclining cats
by the Medina passage still pose.

The grid and a currency of electrons became useless that night
of the furnace wind.
Not that they needed mobile telecoms, the felines, just firefighters.
The cats needed mobility,
too close to the fire, fur!

It strikes me hard, the light, the dark and many shades convergent.
Not so subliminal, charcoal.
You can have it back now, your town‘any colour,
so long as it's black',
or ashen grey at a pinch!

Torches, hairbrushes, a table, art, tool handles, wind up radios, pencils.
All, or most, Incendiary food,
need I say more?

Another cuddle with a scruffy friend some consolation,
as we navigate now primaeval carbonised streets. 
Ruefully I survey a spot with olive groves;
between night barking dogs
and intimacy.
Charred, jet black stubs adorn the place where
I might have called it plantation home.

That arson night the accelerant intoxicated forest,
rained incandescent offerings 
on the innocent, in their nightclothes.
The firestorm proclaimed, ‘Trajectory Lottery’;
 have a tidy roof over your head? not any more!

Still, we, my gentle watchers and I are knowing
of quiet celestial bodies
and fiery characters, all in time and rotation, crescent moon.
Good people, not perfect, but good, struggle.

The remote prospect of novel non-religious house front tiling,
seems to recede, just a little,
In the sooty face of trauma.
No space in the stable this season.
Actually, no stable Bethlehem.
Give me a hammer with a shaft in situ, nails.
Oh, and yes, timber again.
Then stable and byre.

Philadelphi, corridor to nowhere! 
Diplomacy, in the slow lane.
This time, compass pivots wildly,
but, will swing back
again, 
dear Gaza, sometime.

Re-written for Gaza, November 2024.