February 26, 2015

Bad News

Bad News

 

If you looked at this quiet street
The cookie cutter houses and the tidy lawns
And I said — guess which house
Tragedy hit — you’d probably guess mine:
Mine, with the overgrown lawn, cause Ed
Won’t come when I call; mine — the waste-high weeds,
The loveless look of a part time home.

But you’d be wrong, you know,
Because he came home last week
In a dirty uniform and tired face
And he said, “Remember our neighbor Sam?”

I know Sam.
I saw him not long ago in front of his pretty home
Maybe playing with his two big dogs, or working on his car,
Or maybe I waved at his wife, or son,
Or sighed over their lawn.
Sam, of the kind face and super hero looks,
Who fed our cat when we were at the beach.

Sam, who was with my husband
On a nameless Afghan mountain
One August day was shot-
“Straight through the neck
– nothing the medics could do –
– just a fluke they hit him -”

News like that – a punch in the gut

– Injustice – a good man – for what? –

A crack in the façade
of kind divinity.
Maybe I could have prayed a little more.
Maybe a grander gesture could be made.

What’s left to say?
One man came home and one did not.
And I’m the lucky one again.

We rock our rocking chairs and drink a beer.
We listen to the fading summer night.

Alexandra Rosenberg is an MS3 at Duke. She grew up in NYC and has since lived- with more or less enthusiasm- in Texas, Georgia, Hawaii, the UK and most recently, North Carolina. She is currently surviving the frigid North Carolinian winters with the help of her husband, Trey, and her cat, Kitty