-Incantations-

(I wrote this poem before he deployed. And thank you, everyone, for your compliments on my writing! I'm so glad to know people enjoy reading my blog.)


If I thought it were within my power to call down
the half remembered rites of ancient convictions
the urgent scrambling of the psyche against inherent helplessness
those fragile, blood smeared rituals
trembling in the face of a life so much larger than conception allows-
I would do so, Darling, I would do so.

If I could hang about your person small tokens of protection
little bags of bones, coins, crumbling constructions of fear
hardly held at bay, I would, Darling- I would leave
scrips coiled in your clothing and concoctions in your inner pockets.

But I can't and I don't know them, Darling
these things weren't ever in the possession of my maternal line-
my mind, trained and bounded by the clean
unwavering assumptions of a modern education
won't allow me the small comforts of sorcery.

Instead, I'll offer up all the desperation in supplication silently
to a God I will never understand but was never able to abandon
and weave about you verses pulled from belief and childhood.

This alone must serve to protect us both;
there are, I suppose, worse things to invoke than
the mercy of a holy Mystery.