Category: Veteran’s Day

• The hill faraway

  The hill stands innocent as it always has – empty now, or perhaps drowsily crossed by weekend strollers. What is left of you there, your fellow soldiers: the mud of your steps, blood melting the snow? I breathe in here, where I am now, and wonder if walkers there breathe you in. I ask if…

  Jenifer

  November 11, 2018

  Meditation, Memory, Nature, Veteran’s Day

  poetry

• Waiting for the doctor

  hazy dry, as if in midair distant beeps, rattles, blood pressure cuff wheezing up, releasing, hour after hour, day may become day Of all possible recollections, you pick the one from December twelfth, thirteenth or fourteenth, you revolve, nineteen-fifty-three in ice cold Korea showering down in luxuriance, soap, frigid water trailing over your skin after…

  Jenifer

  November 10, 2016

  Aging, Death, Dying, Meditation, Memory, My family, Parenting, Veteran’s Day, Violence

  poetry

• I do not cry loud for battle

  I do not cry loud for battle having given my hand already having held my dying kin having rested under this willow as the breeze swayed its lashes smooth across my breast having gazed into the open starlit sky with the wonder of many years yet to travel No, I do not cry loud but…

  Jenifer

  November 11, 2015

  Aging, Death, Memory, Public, Veteran’s Day

  poem

• Memorial stone

  I can leave you only a wisp of my breath and honest intent as I pause, watching you, with both eyes, a swollen heart, and wonder if my wisp builds upon you with all these others, millions and millions I see now and can only imagine, and worry if we impose a burden adding to…

  Jenifer

  November 5, 2015

  Chicago, Memory, Public, Veteran’s Day

  poem

• Book of changes, i

  The sun was bright today, but not enough to keep the lanterns lit tonight. Bare tree branches in tangled knots streak the black blue sky, scraping the air as they sway. If I had thought to prepare, it would not strike so hard that we will spend months waiting for a new set of leaves…

  Jenifer

  November 11, 2014

  Aging, Dying, Memory, Nature, Public, Seasons, Veteran’s Day

  poetry