Music teacher Ahmed Abu Amsha performs for children and adults in Gaza. Image: YouTube/United Nations
By Mike Jenkins
(for Ahmed Abu Amsha)
He took a note from a drone
Brought it down to his guitar
Made it into a stirring song
Even as the desert dust
Blew over the ruins of his home.
It was taken down
To the burnt ground,
Where he gathered them together
In a battered not broken room,
Their smiles in full bloom:
A choir of young girls,
Shoots watered and nurtured
Despite floods, then the bitter soil –
They filled the lethal skies
With choruses and harmonies.
They followed his chords, his words,
Where an orchard was growing,
Each one a small sapling –
Without a bullet or an aim
He’d taken a note from a drone.
