I. Condemned
A schoolyard brims with bullies of all kinds—
The ones who strike, the ones who stand aside
While verbal blows from all too clever minds
Rain down like bullets drenched in cyanide.
She—he—was diff’rent, everybody knew.
The close-cropped hair, the glossless lips betrayed
This “girl” would never be one of the crew—
And even kindly lasses were dismayed.
Eleven is a hard age to find out
That life is cruel, violent and unfair
And heros few and far between. Without
Protectors, oddballs learn there’s few who care.
Ten years of vicious stings in hostile hives;
A wonder any one of them survives.
II. Acceptance
The doctor entered, looking gray and grim.
His clipboard clutched against his lab coat and
His step had lost its jauntiness. For him
That was unusual. His speech was canned:
”The tumor isn’t shrinking, and in fact,
We’ve seen it spread to liver and to lung.
There is no chemo that can counteract
It.” Glancing to see how the news had stung.
But I knew that my end was nigh in sight—
Some sense for decades dozing till this hour.
I sought to reassure him. Only trite
And sickly pablum seemed within my power.
”I thank you, doctor. I am quite prepared.”
Relieved, he left the room, defenses spared.
III. First fall
”I’m clumsy. Nothing more,” he reassured
His wife, whose widened eyes gave mild rebuke.
”The floor’s uneven!” She, somewhat inured
To his excuses, didn’t want to spook
Him till they reached more stable ground at home.
She sat him down and said, “Dear, look at me.
We need to talk. I’ve read of a syndrome
That starts with minor tripping. And I see
You struggling with your balance. And what’s more,
You drag one foot while out to get the mail
We ought to see a doctor to be sure.”
For once he let his partner close the sale.
The strongest action humans can perform
Is letting weakness interrupt the norm.
IV. Mother
He caught her from the corner of his eye
The court was crowded, yet he recognized
Her by her height, an eyebrow, how she’d try
To glimpse before his wrists were paralyzed
By cuffs and strong arms hauling him away
To prison or some gulag on the ice
In solitary where the light of day
Is bought at far too terrible a price.
The guards, harsh brutish men, are pitiless.
They taunt, they beat, insult, humiliate,
As if a frigid cell is wild excess
That must be curbed to satisfy the state.
A mother’s fleeting glance the only trace
Of longing for an hours-long embrace.
V. Help
The island night was dark and full of sound
From birds and creatures never seen by day.
The tourists on a turnoff could be found
Attempting vainly to chance on a way
To change a flattened tire before gangs
Of maddened locals seeking easy bank
Could sniff them out or end them with sharp bangs
From zip guns and their credit cards to yank.
A shadowed face from shadows soon emerged—
A lantern and a lug wrench in his hand.
The tire replaced; the shaken tourists urged
To mend the old one at his auto stand.
Not all that dwells in jungles will consume
You. Better to be hopeful than presume.
VI. True Image
The mothers chanted as they walked the street
With signs, each bearing pictures of a child
Who disappeared. Their anguished slogans greet
The sweating soldiers armed and double-filed.
Their luckless children, likely not detained,
But lain in shallow trenches dug by night,
With bullet holes to show where life’s blood drained
While power-hungry demons postured might.
The urge to hold, to pamper, to caress
Dies not when objects of our love depart;
A mother knows no heavier distress
Than distance from the object of her heart.
An infant’s face indelibly incised;
A mother’s soul forever sensitized.
VII. Second fall
My father in this fact’ry swept the floors.
At home, he bowed the fiddle like first chair
In some great orchestra. The thickest scores
Would quail before his virtuoso’s flair.
I have his violin, but not his knack
For stringing scores of notes with grace and ease.
However, I have learned to keep good track
Of inventory — crates of milk, curd, cheese
And all the goods the dairy farms produce.
Today, a note was slid across my desk—
Its pinkish hue allowed me to deduce
Its news. A bitter laugh at the grotesque
Way it arrived escaped my tautened lips:
Three decades of fine service in eclipse.
VIII. The women
The black-clad sister rang the recess bell;
The children halted in the midst of play;
Their kicking balls rolled to the one who fell
And left a trail of blood there in the clay.
Four somber nuns rushed to the scene inspired
Less than to order keep than stem the flow.
A broken bottle slit a vein, required
A pressure bandage and some thread to sew
The wound before the darling child expired.
An ebon-robed religious rang the bell
To gather healthy children, get them choired
And into school ‘fore something worse befell.
The veil of sternness falls where blood is spilt
And through dark clouds shine kindnesses inbuilt.
IX. Third fall
The IED tore off his lower legs
And left him helpless on the dusty road.
The cup of pain, he drained it to the dregs
But managed to unstrap his heavy load.
He saw his mangled limbs a short way off
And had a fleeting thought he should retrieve
Them. Then the smoke pried out a dusty cough—
His throat on fire, his chest began to heave.
The thirst began as blood pooled in the sand;
His whole head drumming as the sun beat down.
He tried to twist his canteen, but his hand
Was weak, he spilled the water on the ground.
His vision reddened. Shallow came his breath.
Is this what others saw before their death?
X. Stripped
”All prisoners in camp must now disrobe,”
The tinny voice came from a speaker hung
Upon a pole where drooped the flag the globe
Had come to fear. The naked women flung
Their tops in one pile, in that one their shoes,
Another for their silken underwear,
While matrons with their batons dangling loose
On leather straps tried gamely not to stare.
The speaker came alive once more to urge
The herd down cold, cemented stairs, all packed
Like cows in pens, then through a door the surge;
Behind them, doors were bolted with a clack.
The gas would come. Though no one knew it yet,
This school of fish was held fast in a net.
XI. Nailed
The men-boys on her, at her, in her. She
Had no chance to resist, no strength to fight
Them off, nor fathom the brutality
That tore her in that alley without light.
She knew them all, had seen them each in class;
Believed mere recognition would protect
Her. That a friendly smile, communal glass
Might block the road where lewd wills intersect
With opportunity and low regard
That some men to the other gender show—
Conquistators to what ought to be barred;
To know what only lovers ought to know.
Her tattered bra and panties as their prize,
They scatter. She uncages woeful cries.
XII. Dies
The ward is quiet, dimly lit, for it
Is one-ten in the morning. Families gone
Back home to sleep, while patients lithely flit
Twixt life and death. Heart monitors are on—
A death gauge, not a tool to diagnose
A flutter or a fibrillating beat
Not when demise is present and so close
That Death demands and gets a ringside seat.
In room fourteen, a corpselike form inhales—
No doctor, priest or nurse steps in to check
Behind the pap’ry eyelids, vision fails
And pulses slow along the scrawny neck.
No fam’ly to alert, to mourn the rift—
They’ll find her at the changing of the shift.
XIII. Descent
They’re found in ev’ry people, time and place:
The gatherers of bone and flesh and blood
Who trouble to fetch every speck and trace
That sticks to walls or seeps into the mud.
Some do it for their God, some for the sake
Of sanitation. Bagging, tagging, for
Police or loved ones furious to make
Some sense or meaning of the crime or war
Or nat’ral act that flattened village schools
Or sent hot flying lead through babies’ chests.
We humans have no other means or tools
To give a start to everlasting rest.
Thus, deposition ends what love began—
With love to close the tortured human span.
XIV. Tomb
The great wave broke upon the town at dawn
Before the townsfolk had a chance to rise.
The sirens had been silenced, whereupon
The waters had the chance to wield surprise—
A frightful lapse — a checklist item missed,
Ten thousand corpses now the sad result,
That snagged in branches, crushed by walls to grist.
No photographic record to consult,
Each body bagged and dropped into a pit
Was known but to their God, except for one
Who flood and tide preserved a single bit
To mark them if a neighbor could have done:
The tattoo of a dolphin on an arm
Against oblivion, a potent charm.
The Stations of the Cross is an ancient Christian devotion in which worshippers meditate on each of fourteen “stations” related to the journey of Christ to the cross. These sonnets offer modern parallels to the traditional stations.
Image adapted from one generated using DreamStudio.
Not having been raised in your faith tradition I’m not able to glean the full symbolism, but these are heart fending, and so appropriate for this time of Lent. Thank you