Excerpt from Available Light

                 Hands of God

The Aids babies
bone thin, with muscles
barely able to raise a smile
reach for the hands
held out to them
and look deeply into the eyes
that meet theirs
without fear.

Nobody said love would be easy.
The nurse has just buried
her fifth baby this week.
She no longer believes
that God loves these children.

To Brother Toby,
every moment is precious,
and every child deserves
this little ransom of love
at the edge of death.

He does not come
to justify God or to explain
why these children suffer,
but to look and to touch,
to be an instrument of love
in a world of pain.

In the Aids wards of Romania,
hundreds of children die each week.
There, the face of pain
is solemn, almost resigned.

To most of these children,
death is a welcome friend,
and its hands are softer
than the hands of life.

But to a few, something deeper
has come, something
that cannot be told in words,
but can be seen in the eyes
of those whose bodies
have been held and caressed.

They alone are God's witnesses.

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