Hard Duty

Carolyn Forche, born in 1950 is a contemporary poet. She wrote a poem she called The Colonel that she wrote of one of her experiences of the strife in El Salvador. She wrote the poem in 1978. That strife eventually turned into the conflict known as the Salvadoran Civil War, commonly dated 1980-1992. I was so taken with the poem that I wrote with her images in my own way. In a strange way it works in my own life. Her poem describes something that happened to her, while mine is metaphorical. Click on the poem name to see her original. It is really powerful.

Of course, my poem is not about another country and if it is a war, it is more personal.

Hard Duty

To sit at dinner
with you in your uniform
was enough for me,
but then you brought out
in a ragged paper sack
your recollections.

They were like sliced off
ears, dessicated and brown,
and you showed me them
as if you were proud.

You even took one of them,
your recollections,
and dropped it into
the water of your new life.
It got all plumped up.

April 13, 2012 3:09 PM