The poem “No Child’s Word or Whistle,” is dedicated to the mother in the Ukraine who lost her eighteen month old son, and to all parents and children who should never know this pain.
Corrie,
did you see
a mother cried
because her baby
boy died
with shrapnel in his head.
His mother screamed,
“Why?” as someone led
her into a room in
a hospital wing
in a city under siege,
and
Corrie,
Is there time to fall apart
when one man and his ego
strike the world hard
with bombs and missiles,
while some tanks slow down?
Not a child’s word or whistle
echo in the town.
Corrie,
I know you’ve graduated away
from the tears and tummy aches.
Did you lift him from the city’s gray
smoke and ash? He was eighteen
months, and his mother
felt for the words in between
her sobs and screams
of: Why does such a man
run a nation?
Corrie,
We were not at war, but I know too well
the doctor’s voice. In my nightmares,
she greets me, and there I fell
When she said–and says again– “We’ll try
one more time, but if it doesn’t work,
she’s gone.”
Corrie,
on the radio the song plays
“Sometimes, all I think about is you,”
reminding me of brighter days
before tears and tummy aches.
I see the mother on the news.
I know her pain and the lonely call.
I wear her new pair of shoes,
but I don’t know war, nor
a dictator’s demands to destroy.
Corrie,
I know June will come again–
our third without you–and others
count the days when I begin
to show who I was before, but I
only smile if I feel it
down to my core
because, as the mother of her
son knows, half of our souls
flew away with you.
Corrie,
It’s March and I see
journalists’ coverage
of war on TV.
But I also see the
cherry blossom trees bloom
at lower elevations, and I
await for the buds
on your little tree
to appear, too.
Corrie's Season 