Those who know the depths of human frailty and how even the little good we do is a borrowed thing, though grieved, will be surprised at nothing. — François Fénelon for T. K. On a small Pacific island, a church sits atop a low hill. Spanish-built, set on fire by Japanese, then bombed and bombed again by US liberators, windows without glass, doors unhinged, unlockable, it is a shell of stone open to everything: an orange cat chases geckos up its walls, red-tailed parrots nest in the plaster eaves, as lizards, deep blue, yawn beneath rows of folding seats. Here today a Mass will be held to hundreds. How the will to understand is a palm held outward saying, I am unarmed, I come in peace. Each month the US recruiters come looking for new soldiers. My student goes to Guam next week to train. The money is good, he says, better than anything in Pohnpei. Afterward, he will be sent overseas, though doesn’t know where or why. I hope it's the Middle East, he tells me. I want to see where my brother died. The early voyagers of the Pacific did not view the ocean as having an edge from which one might fall. Opposing tides, the parishioners file in, white or not, the nots many more, local women in urohs, handmade skirts, kaleidoscopic, each a different pattern and story, the men awkward in Sunday shirts and slacks, brown feet bare. As they wait, they sing in Pohnpeian, which means words from God’s stone altar in their tongue, a language thousands of years old, with watery roots as long and deep as an ocean. How compassion is an abstract noun, playground of the privileged. He tells me about yesterday at Joy Hotel, two white women eating crab, their skin translucent, blue arm veins roads of ink on a pale map. They spoke English, their voices seemed even louder in that dining room. Working lunch, said one, Imagine if we tried this back home? The other woman laughed and laughed. The Senator sighs, rubs along his jaw the long scar from helping his father spear reef fish as a boy, ten cents a pound. How understanding withheld is the whip of the master. Embassy staff, charity NPOs, World Teach teachers roughing it out of Bronxville, Kensington, Bel Air, they form a stiff knot at the front, here to fix, to advise, checking watches, all shiny, well-shod — this is mastery's trap, that you forget you are one of them. The needle-straight line of charity that chains the privileged to the not. At the register, the lady in front of me struggles, breathless, diabetic, her swollen hands unable to close, grip. We buy the same food, General Mills, Morinaga, Kraft, Nestle, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, Kikkoman, Meiji — there’s nothing else. It's all so cheap, she tells me as I guide her hand clear of the purse, her crumpled dollar bills … even the currency foreign. She says, What would I do without you? Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is Abel your brother?” The priest is from Yap, shrunken, spine curved like a question, hands shaking as he praises God, lifts an unsteady chalice to his lips. Next to him, his helper leans, ready to reach out, to catch and hold, Though who will hold the helper? I wonder, both over seventy, both dying, tumors in their lungs, their eyes. “Micronesia has become a recruiter’s paradise for the U.S. military, yet they have lost five times more soldiers, per capita, than any U.S. state.” — Island Soldier, 2018. Q & A after, the natives restless, their questions’ rat-a-tat rain blown against glass. Ambassador Bob does his best, We understand your concerns, he tells them as they say the names of loss, over and over until it is sound only. How hope is held longest in two hands. How like fall leaves it falls to rot. In this stone shell, this loam of dusk, he says, Mass is for our children who continue to fight in wars they did not start nor cannot end. And then into the long silence, he adds suddenly, a whisper, God give me, give us strength to say no.

Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
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