Just as every hue of red flows through the rising sun,
So in the course of the day
I come to realize my emptiness:
In the middle of the night my husband clasps my hand
And up my arm travel in their millions
The ghosts of young men:
Their faces beautiful,
Even when besmirched by soot and mud.
As they pass I embrace them
And each whispers something:
“I loved the heft of a spanner in my hands
 And the sound of engines.”
“I loved to race along the roads of Devon on my motorcycle —
How the hedgerows blurred!”
“I loved to test myself and my sailboat in the Irish Sea,
And off to the west Slieve Donard glows in the afternoon light.”
“I loved hauling in the bulging net, dripping fish and water,
My mates next to me heaving on the rope —
Two more seasons and the boat will be mine
And I shall swagger on the quay,”
This he told me in his Norman patois.
“I love the smell of upturned black earth as I guide the plow,
The moist soil of Mother Russia,
And I whistle thinking of Vesna
And the way she looked at me at Easter
And the basket of painted eggs she gave me:
I will ask her father for her hand.”
Many ask for simple things —
A sip of water, a twist of tobacco.
Many plead, “Restore my sight!”
Or “Give me new lungs!”
Or “Put me back together!”
A young man not much beyond boyhood
Shivers on his cot in a great city under siege.
Sheets of ice coat the wallpaper.
“Take away my memories, of the babushkas at dawn
Heaping corpses on their barrows.”
“Under a blue sky and swaying palms
I saw men on fire
Screaming and running in circles —
Take this memory from me.”
So they flow through me:
I am their mother, sister, sweetheart,
Nurse and best friend.
My husband strokes the side of my face and he is all men,
And through his hand my son appears:
“I am ever at your side, just nearby,
I surround you, I fill you,
I am your aura of ever-changing hue,
Like the sun transforming itself
As it rises unhurried above the horizon.”

November 17th, 2006