Letter to Aidan:
by Lea Grundy

In your warm room
I watched you sleeping.
The neighbors' porch light made the bars
Around your small and sweaty face,
Arms slim and sweet as young bamboo.

Dreams moved across your eyes like wind in water
And the shell of our house seemed fragile as an egg:
Nothing but my body to put between
Your growing life
And people at knife-point in an airplane's narrow aisles,
Naked men surrendering in the sand,
Burned babies screaming in their mothers' arms,
A young woman praying,
Bulldozers rolling over soft bodies,
Her fine, pale hair.

Aidan, I'm sorry
That the day I got arrested
Your teacher made you answer,
Made you tell them all
Why,
Why,
Why.
Aidan, forgive me.
We'd used up all the words.



~
Copyright © 2006 - Lea Grundy
Published: 12/14/06   ·  Author's Page   ·  Next Poem