Memorial Day: The Unmaking of a Sonnet

2010

My story begins with you, your war, your truth, and dreams.

For you, all were irony and hurt, all bitter salt,

whilst I found love, and laughed and sighed and soared and knew

that all my life was you, and all we’d have was mine.

I knew your laws of history, how they moved and stirred, and formed

a child of ardent heart and mind, clawed, yet couth,

a force that aspired to choose the cause of truth, not death,

to pursue the course of light, not the quietening of a breath.

Yet how be free to choose, when life’s but fortune’s die?

And, say, what kindly rule thwarts indifference, cold or cruel?

How lose a love that’s life itself and, parted, still be whole?

For what wounded life can be restored that roots can somehow bind?

What guide or truth that’s sought could find such a law, or doom?

And how should I engage my mind, with your soul still restless, strewn?

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/896799573