Afghan Girl, Nurse, Orange
Acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30 inches, 2009

This eight-year-old Afghan girl was severely wounded in a Taliban attack on her family. It looked like she might lose her right leg. Captain Bruce Reeves, head ward nurse, suggested that they try a skin graft from the girl's healthy leg. For three weeks her legs were bound together at the ankles and the procecure worked. I witnessed this girl walk out of the hospital.

Orange
by Hazel Hall, 2014
Poet in Residence, School of Music, Canberra, Australia
in response to Afghan Girl, Nurse, Orange

you’ve painted the gift of an orange
from adult to child
homes oceans apart
small hands cupped hungrily
like open flowers
waiting for the fruit

you’ve painted the nurse with softened face
breaking segments
he understands
such pleasures should be shared
between many
not much is grown in sand

you’ve painted a segment of family
more precious in times of war
this gift of fruit – will it briefly transform
the small wan face – erase
old memories of detonators, tears
and makeshift graves?

you’ve painted a segment of village
windfalls on the ground
are lost ones
after the shudder of guns …
you’ve painted hope in the spokes of a chair
each spoke a prayer for peace
all this the nurse reflects on
some time – maybe soon
he’ll return to a place
where juice is squeezed
and flesh is thrown aside
perhaps one day he’ll stop – recall …

you’ve painted him in Afghanistan
helping an injured girl eat an orange …
eat it all