you might have seen her face in some associated press photo

somewhere in some daily paper’s pages
to you & me dots on a faceless woman’s face
you might have seen her face a fraction of a sec. on TV news
before the commercial jump cut
you might have seen
a face in the crowd among surviving faces
a face among suffering faces in the war-torn zone
you might have seen

a mother’s face not knowing
her only child was blown up by a missile

this mother every time she dreams
it’s always a butterfly
believing her daughter
has come back to life

© 2007 by Aldo Tambellini. Originally published in the anthology, Poet’s Against the Killing Fields published by the Liberation Poetry Collective. Tambellini is an intermedia pioneer, painter, sculptor, and poet.