Wednesday, September 14, 2011

30 Poems in 30 Days


Memory of an Historic Event

Life was never the same again.
The realms of possibility expanded
to somewhere insane.

It was the day you turned ten.
We can never have that day back.
It was a lost day and since then

you stopped reaching for my hand
stopped curling up on Sundays
in my bed. I understand

Happy Birthday sounded out of sync
and you, my darling daughter
wouldn’t ever let me think

that you’d be so petty as to mind
the whole world watching fireworks
of a completely horrific kind.

You blew the candles on a cake
not baked for a day when love
and reason could forsake

a world you trusted to remain
safe, inherently good,
orderly, nurturing and – well, sane.

And now you’re twenty, every decade
heals the scars. But of what unpredictable
decisions are our lives yet made?

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