More Than Displaced
(Playing ~ CloudEight background music)

Faces reach into our lives and tug on heartstrings
As, watching from a distance, we feel horror.
Scattered families brave the weather while fear and shock
Show in their bleak faces the signs of sorrow
That war has brought to their land.
People walk along the roads and keep on looking
Here and there just searching for the missing.
Many footprints in the mud help tell the story
Of lives uprooted, but still they keep wishing
For some comfort and a familiar hand.
Faces pierce the ease of our days and still haunt
All of us, for we have never been there.
Fleeing, hiding, will they ever find the way back
To a land that holds what they remember as theirs
Even though much is burned and gone?

Children's eyes are filled with tears and seem to question
What this is all about and when it will end.
Older people who have never before left their homeland
Mourn the loss of community, family, and friends,
Then share this grief, and wait for dawn.
Faces stare from their bodies and reflect the torment
Of running, trying hard to sleep on the ground.
Some are searching for a loved one, but in vain
Since many are gone and likely will not be found
Until the future reveals what is in the mounds.
All seems lost and the dear, loved places of childhood
Fade, but still they come by thousands to the borders,
Mostly old men, little children,and their mothers
Cross, but what is written on faces of daughters?
No one wants to say or make a sound.

~ Hilna Watters Long, author
Reflections
Copyright © 2000
Roxboro, North Carolina

My thanks to my very good friend for allowing me to use her poignant and beautiful poem.
She wrote this after seeing and hearing so much about the war in the former Yugoslavia.

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