Friday, November 5, 2010

Big Tent Nov.1/10 prompt - borrow line from other Big Tent poet

There Is a Sadness

At Gitmo, the child soldier has just pleaded guilty to murder
After years of injustice and incarceration and vowing
That he would never plead to doing what he knows he did not
He has gone over into manhood now and with that, reality

And under threat of unending imprisonment far from home
And implied torture beyond that which he has already endured
That will not ever be acknowledged publicly, nor privately, truth be told

His heart and soul and mind are weary beyond anything he can imagine
Beyond anything worse than the now of it; he is broken in all the ways
That matter, although the confusion surrounding just was does, is vague

In his mind he sees his mother and sisters as they were when he left Canada
They have to stoop to hug him and are smiling as they wave good-bye
Behind them in the yard, flowers are dying *and willows weep, not knowing why.


*note, and willows weep, not know why – Vivienne Blake’s words.

6 comments:

  1. Wow! You took this far away from the nature poem that this line came from. Your poem is very powerful, as well as topical.

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  2. very sad to think this is so close to the reality of it, what made you think of Gitmo to write of with Willows? I wonder it must be an interesting answer! Funny I used the same borrowed phrase....

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  3. It's funny Amanda but I have written about trees many times, weeping birches (not willows but close) among them - somehow they always end up echoing human sentiments for me ... I've even thought of doing a collection featuring trees and emotions ... as for the subject matter; I have a friend who is doing an anthology on the Khadr case and his cause has become dear to me as well ...

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  4. Stunning and timely piece! That line was powerful, too!

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  5. I like the narrator's compassion in this, the enjambment that pressures the circumstance.

    The truth, exposed in a still, quiet way.

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