I went to war My Love

I’m back or you are

Where we left space immediate

With my bandaged head and my shrapnel shame

Walking wounded

You see my eyes closed

Can’t share with you those shapes those lights

Or what I fell through heavy on my own

Facing forward

While you were gone friend

I marched to war with demons you don’t know

And battled with less stoicism than need

Bleeding plenty

Now you’re back and here

I cannot share with you the failure or the courage

Which led the charge through a thousand

Traitor Treasures

My gaze blank and difficult

With a veneer of pleasantry and affection tempered

By the memory I fail to share with you or with your

Failed attendance

I went to war my love

I bled and caught the bloodspill along my bitten tongue

Of casualties you cannot know in combat

All unmoved (removed)

Angela Sidoti © 2011

- - 11/11/2011 - -

Be Like a Tree

Be like a tree said old woman to me
Grow in the ground and happy you’ll be
Reach for the sky with your limitless green
Dig deep in the earth so your roots can’t be seen

For trees are so happy to stand there all day
Reaching and digging each opposite way
Smiling inside with their trunks growing strong
Not judging the weather as right or as wrong

But stretching and bending and learning those things
That make tree so peaceful with all that life brings
Be like a tree said old woman to me
Toes in the ground, and be happy, you’ll see

Angela Sidoti © 2006