Memorial Day

He died before he ever made my mother

Welcome, and a warm first hello to the newcomers!

I’m so happy you’re here.

Today, I give you a poem about Memorial Day.

MEMORIAL DAY

How deep into a war does a person need to die
In order to celebrate their name on Memorial Day?
Does it count if most of them comes back home,
But some secret part never makes it onto the plane?

My grandfather, the one who raised my mother,
The one who would hoist her sleeping teen body onto her feet
To stifle her exhausted yearning for rest,
That grandfather became something different over in Korea.

They say the war never ended, and that was my observation,
As I crept on small-girl tiptoes into the smoke-haze living room
And peered at the so-tall man with my mother’s black hair,
Who stared back at me, sullen and quiet, wary of my bloom. 

He died before he ever made my mother, but somehow she became,
A woman from a man from a place that changed him,
And I see now that she spent her whole life mourning a living family
The same way I pined, and do still. 

How would you like to hold The Lizzy Co Show poetry in your own hands?

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