TWO POEMS
Dirt Hits the Coffin
Mama how many bullets to save the
Many, too many, too many, my friend
And the shovel lifts, dirt hits the coffin
A daughter wears her heart on her
Sleeve, grief drives her to her knees
And the shovel lifts, dirt hits the coffin
Mama who will bake the challah bread
I don’t want to bleed, for a racist to lead
And the shovel lifts, dirt hits the coffin
A rabbi takes a bullet in each hand
A radical empath took the rest to heart
And the shovel lifts, dirt hits the coffin
Recite the Yizkor for me on the second day
Shavuot, Shemini Atzeret, and Yom Kippur.
And the shovel lifts, the dirt hits the coffin
A husband weeps for his wife’s sacrifice
His life spared, he promises not in vain
And the shovel lifts, dirt hits the coffin
I don’t want to bleed my heart on my sleeve
I don’t want a daughter on her knees
And the shovel lifts, the dirt hits the coffin
Two Days History
Notre Dame Cathedral is burning.
How many poems will be created
from its ashes? If poets know nothing
else, we know how to bleed misery.
Look to the Rose window how she
blooms fibrous like a coal miners’ lung.
Watch Melissa Bell’s CNN interview,
oblivious to Paris agony a fame seeker
slyly wants his due and remains in frame
behind the story, lacey spires burnt
remains tumble into her cathedrals embrace.
Fame is fleeting young heart.
History is being unmade. Replicate, re-
build, no living soul can or will replace
the history in the foundation, nor the
thirteen thousand trees which gave life
to a vaulted ceiling framing
uncounted benedictions.
Centuries unwritten in smoke licked prayers.
Twelve hours devoured between day into night.
Watch from the banks of the Seine as smoke
tickles your nostrils with burnt dissipating
heartbreak. You who are left to contemplate
this gothic mutilated moment, a depraved, lost,
remorseful heart of a city.
What have the ancient stone chipped gargoyles
witnessed? The bells, the bells, they ring their
last as the Rose Window blackens.
Hope, assurances offered in small words for
an American that is not grieving French.
Not only Paris, the world
lost a trace of its history.
How many hail Mary’s
for worldwide grief friar?
While Notre Dame blew ash in our eyes, in America
The Boston Marathon carried its own weighted
history. Do you remember, do you remember
when six years past, Boston’s heart was blown.
And today Boston’s heart raced on;
in America a marine Micah Herndon
crawled over the finish line of the
Boston Marathon with the names
of three marines on his lips, servicemen who lost their
lives in an Afghanistan attack in 2010.
Our countrymen ‘tis of thee how we grieve. History
bled our future true.
Dagger hearts for those who remember human loss.
Day two, the cathedral still smolders, we learn
about a brave human chain led by Paris’ Mayor for
Tourism and Sport - Jean Francois Martins
attempting to save holy relics, among the saved items
the Crown of Thorns. Human lives - risked to save?
History? Do they not know history has already
tabulated its cost in countless lives?
Our history does not line the walls of gothic
architectures. Look closely what do you see
threaded in the background of history,
look for the humane. Those storytellers who have a
tale to tell, the ones that begin with I was there,
I saw with my own eyes. Those are the
stories which will unwrite history as we know it.
In America we pledge to help rebuild the Notre Dame
Cathedral. Who will rebuild the three black churches
scorched to earth, racism driven. Flint still doesn’t have
clean drinking water. What of Puerto Rico
and our failure to help?
Native American women continue to
turn up missing and murdered. Look closer, closer,
history is still being written on our shores.
Sage Ravenwood
Sage Ravenwood is a deaf Cherokee woman residing in upstate NY with her two rescue dogs, Bjarki and Yazhi, and her one-eyed cat Max. She is an outspoken advocate against animal cruelty and domestic violence. Her work can be found in Glass Poetry - Poets Resist. She also has work forthcoming, Sundress Press anthology, The Familiar Wild: On Dogs and Poetry.
Twitter: @SageRavenwood