As a summer person, I’m less excited than others I know to see it end. This abecedarian poem allowed me to experiment with words without searching for profound meanings, allowed me to play.
While a lot of the world is focused on Ukraine and Israel/Gaza, since April 2023, two groups, the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces, have been fighting for control of Sudan. 11.1 million people are displaced and more than 17,000 killed, mostly civilians including children. Currently, for the second time since 2003, famine lurks at the door of Darfur state. Although I wrote the poem thinking about Sudan, a lot of the same conditions apply to Congo.
Amidst the denuded trees along a wide
boulevard walked a tall, dark-haired girl
carrying a large basket filled with a few
deep red pomegranates, two brown
eggs and three delicate pastries
filled with pineapple, cinnamon, and
guava, her favorite. She felt lucky.
Her mother sent her to the market, her mother
ill with ague, shivering, fevered,
jaundiced, too young to be dying, her father
killed in the endless wars which had
leveled so many cities and villages.
Men filled with the desire for revenge, for power,
never thinking how forgiveness and love could
overcome the endless devastation.
People plagued by angry men, men so
quick to condemn all not their tribe, their own,
retribution driving them week after week.
Some lay dying on the streets or dead as
the girl walked around their bodies
under the relentless, tropical sun.
Void of relief, fearful but determined, she
walked on toward the remains of her home.
Xenophobia once again stalked the streets,
young men brandishing assault rifles. Animals in the
Barbara Lewis Duke, pretty, petite, blue eyed and blond, my
mother, one fearless, controlling woman. Long after Mom’s
death, Dad said, “Barbara was afraid of absolutely no one
and nothing.” They married late, 34 and 38. He adored her
unconditionally. She filled my life with horses, music, love,
cornfields, hay rides, books, ambition. Whatever she felt she
had missed, my sister and I were going to possess: books,
piano lessons, a college education. Her father, who died long
before I was born, loved fancy, fast horses. So did she. During
my preschool, croupy years, she quieted my hysterical night
coughing with stories of run away horses pulling her in a wagon.
With less than one hundred pounds and lots of determination,
she stopped them, a tiny Barbie Doll flying across the Missouri
River Bottom, strong, willful, free.
Note: This poem about my mother has been published in at least one anthology and my book of poetry. My mother loved roses, had a rose garden. I now grow roses too.
writingontherim 