I am sitting by a fire with a cup of chai,
in Africa somewhere, thinking
of twenty dead children.
The Turkana women keen in the dark.
‘Woitokoi,’ they say, ‘Woitokoi,’
a call of lament.
Oh, mom.
It’s your babies
It’s your babies

I rarely turn on the radio, but do tonight.
14th of December.  Cooking coconut curry.
I watch the last red and gold fall behind skeleton trees
and step out into the cold with my guitar and Willie Nelson’s
‘Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys.’
Is anyone watching the sparrows falling?

You mothers who have lost a child,
you fathers who have lost a child,
have gone where none can follow
but One who loves you, loves me,
even school shooters, maybe;
One who hates evil
for what it destroys,
One who
(for this love
and hatred)
listens to His son say:
Father
Father
Why have you forsaken me.
One who says to you now:
though father and mother forsake you
yet I will not forsake you--


I am sitting by a fire in Shelton, Connecticut,
thinking of twenty dead babies.
Oh mom.  Mom.
It’s your babies.
It’s your babies.
It’s your babies