this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war

we love and support our troops, just as we love and support the Iraqi people – without exception, or precondition, or judgment

we have no sympathy for the devil

image and poem below the fold

Theresa Seeley is comforted by a friend as she clutches the American flag presented to her at the burial of her son, U.S. Army Sgt. Michael Seeley, in St. Anthony’s Cemetery in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, Thursday, Nov. 9, 2006. Seeley, a member of the Mi’Kmaq First Nation, was killed in a bomb attack on Oct. 30 while on duty with the U.S. Army in Iraq.
(AP Photo/Andrew Vaughan, CP)

Evening
by Gail Mazur

Sometimes she’s Confucian–
resolute in privation. . . .

Each day, more immobile,
hip not mending, legs swollen;

still she carries her grief
with a hard steadiness.

Twelve years uncompanioned,
there’s no point longing for

what can’t return. This morning,
she tells me, she found a robin

hunched in the damp dirt
by the blossoming white azalea.

Still there at noon–
she went out in the yard

with her 4-pronged metal cane–
it appeared to be dying.

Tonight, when she looked again,
the bird had disappeared and

in its place, under the bush,
was a tiny egg–

“Beautiful robin’s-egg blue”–
she carried carefully indoors.

“Are you keeping it warm?”
I ask–what am I thinking?–

And she: “Gail, I don’t want
a bird, I want a blue egg.”

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