We see you every day <br />on the newsreels <br />a face like the worn map of tragedy <br />lined with a life of service <br />that should have ended in an honoured peace <br />among those you bore and love <br />your hands reaching out <br />to the TV camera <br />begging for water, food <br />or beseeching <br />in some unrecognisable, ineffective <br />local language, or <br />cursing an enemy not visible <br />who made a ruin of your home <br />or being carried unceremoniously <br />between urgent hands in some material <br />from a bed that is no longer there <br />or sitting bemused by life <br />awaiting some unnamed help beyond request <br />though never accompanied by your son <br />who has found a greater cause <br />than home, or age, and somewhere else… <br /> <br />or, in the occasional poem - <br />tended, your paper skin and jutting hipbones <br />not unlike some starved chicken’s carcase <br />described with painful love <br />as if you only lived a living life <br />in the past tense, <br />beyond the verses, between the metaphors <br /> <br />and yet, if we could only find words <br />to describe what's still living, <br />where pride hides, a pride <br />too precious now in grief to speak, <br />how you love those who are not here.. <br /> <br />and yet, you’re there, alive or dead <br />patient, proud, silent, and unnamed, <br />in every poem <br />that has ever been written <br /> <br />and I salute you<br /><br />Michael Shepherd<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/old-woman-4/
