By Dr. Vera Schwarcz

What will You weave

out of the golden thread

of our grief? After Eyal,

Gilad and Naftali were

cut down?

Three innocent boys.

A whole nation prayed,

cried, sang, learned,

adding holy deeds

to daily worries.

And now?

Three poppies in a slim

China vase before me:

papery petals stream out

from a sun-drenched core

like a small puddle of blood.

So fragile. It cannot be

that we all drift back

to a myriad chores, separate

again. Please do not let

the tapestry of our mourning

be shredded before Your eyes.

Dr. Vera Schwarcz of West Hartford is a professor of East Asian studies and history at Wesleyan University. An accomplished poet, she is the author of several books including Ancestral Intelligence, a book of poems published in 2013.