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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