Protest
You ask me
If I will go with you,
And I say yes.
And then you half turn,
Your eyes on the window,
Which is to say, nothing.
And you say, "But I am old,
My children grown,
My husband gone.
I should not ask it of you.
You have more years to lose."
And what I would say,
If my mouth not derelict to my will,
Is: "You, who sent
Your brother to Korea,
Your son to Vietnam,
You who saw Selma and Kent State,
Dealey Plaza and Watergate,
You who walked the years
Between Free Love and Free Palestine,
Would spare me this?
And what have we done,
We cyber children?
But then, I suppose,
We were surviving the world
Made by those
Who won your battles."
And I think of her,
Niece and daughter, sister, stranger,
With yet clumsy cosmetics,
Lipstick caked on a mouth
Not yet used to her name,
This starveling child,
A duckling becoming a swan.
And I know why you were there,
Through the years,
So that I might pass
The scraps of world you saved
To her.