Commander Michael Scotty Speicher in Captivity
When grief sits heavy and weighs like a knife
Upon the families thinking of you
And the distance up the road yields to strife
Under a soot-mottled sky once blue;
When the numbing night is as a closet dark
Where souls slump against Hate's cold wall
And, calling to another, feel Cain's mark
Unclenched by salty tears that never fall;
When the eyes shut tight down in the mind,
As if hugging tools or weapons cut from rock
And the claws of Fiends fix time
As if to jostle the course of restless clocks,
Suddenly there's Hope breaking up feet
As if on a road unearthed by Fate;
Hope in a land of terrored heat
As if tipping lightly to rout Hate.
And you, my brother, as in a dungeon
Through which prayers rise that taste like grief,
Blaze with that spunk in your heart strung,
Beyond bugle calls and drum beats!
Here, where statesmen rage and sigh
And gales are subdued to foam,
Your name is more than a battle cry
That beckons the heaviest chains home.
by James Wm. Chichetto
... who is a freelance poet, with eight books of verse to his
credit, and works appearing in The Native American Poetry
Anthology, The First Abbey Wood Anthology, The
Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix,
The Colorado Review, Gargoyle,
The Manhattan Review, Poem,
The Paterson Review, as well as previously in
this literary magazine. He is related to combat veterans of the
Korean War and World War Two; and teaches writing and literature
at Stonehill College.
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