grief

Beloved

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Heavenly Creator
I ask this not in my own name but in the name of the One
face down near the olive grove.
She tried rehab three separate times.
Lord, I ask this not in my own name,
for I am unworthy, but I ask, instead, in the name
of the One abandoned by friends.
I was a thousand miles away when she died.
Holy Physician I ask
not in my own name, but in the name of the One
too beaten to shoulder the weight.
Drugs bruised deeply into her battered heart.
Father, I ask this of You in the name of the One
who beseeched You with His final breath:
Here is your daughter. My beautiful Jennifer.
Take her into your home.


____
Published in The Scent of Water on Mirrors, 2013
Written 2004 during a specific time and was meant to reflect what hypocrisy, although those who take it as an image of faith are also welcome. xo

“Look for me. I’ll be there.”

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I have never glimpsed you in the delicate
powder of cabbage butterflies flickering
across fields, nor on the frail
wings of earthy brown sparrows
who peck and scrabble at sidewalks,
not even in the gold and rosy braid
painted along the horizon every morning.

But in the torrential battering of rain
pelting grass blades and windows,
flooding streets and cities,
crashing over bridges and shifting
houses from foundations,
you shine.

Growing Old With Roberta

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Who thinks about being old
when we’re six or seven?
Like next Christmas, or going
to high school, or being able to read
thick books, tomorrow
is merely a concept
and concept is only
a word that small child can’t pronounce.
But here I am
old, complete with cane and grumpy impatience
and seven years old feels strange now.
One or two things are still the same
sometimes. I still wonder
about where you went those long years past.
Why you could, I couldn’t, and if I ever would.
For myself, I hope
to never have a marked place where stray
souls come thinking to find me,
the way I sought to find you and discovered
only a grave
with a weathered stone.

Medal of Honor

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In every dogwood blossom his face
smiles too perfectly.
He never yelled about
my forgotten homework; never
buried my first dog by the fence
in our backyard; never
went eyeball-to-eyeball
with a used car salesman
to get my first car.
He’s a photograph now,
an old one in gray scale.
Only I remember
how the dogwood bloomed
the last time he leaned from the train
to wave goodbye.


~Note: Written to honor Technician Fifth Grade F. Peden who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor on February 13, 1946. All events but the dogwood and the train are fictional.

Archaeology

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Drowned cities
spanning the globe
from John Franklin to Roald Amundsen,
all claim to be Atlantis.
Each one shows off their stone arch. Each one
bears a painted image of warriors still in battle,
or women collecting jugs of water despite
being in the deepest fathoms of it.
Each one declares authenticity, holds up their ruins
and begs to be remembered, as
all of us ask to be remembered,
to be loved for eternity:
I was here. I was here.
Please
never forget me.

© 2021 Vera S. Scott


“. . . there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea.” – Plato

Mothers of Heroes

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What mother wants
her son as a monument,
the rider of a stallion with
both front legs raised,
displaying a plague
that no one reads anymore?

What mother wants
her daughter as a tweetstorm,
thousands of brisk words
and sentences that beg,
plea, and demand
a freedom that never arrives?

What mother wants
her child resting unmarked,
buried with all the other nameless
in unhallowed ground that eventually
gets used as a parking lot?

What mother wants
to carry that much sadness
and claim that it’s pride, say that honor
can supersede the memory
of baby-fine hair, tiny snores,
and all of those silly giggles?

None of us.
It is simply what we do.