March 17: Losing Things, Ellen Bryant Voigt, "Kyrie"

Again, I turn back to Ellen Bryant Voigt's Kyrie for solace.

I'm tired of losing things I cherish.  I have no idea what lesson I'm supposed to learn in all of this, except that grief is just a letter away . . .

Saint Marty is trying to hold on to hope.

from Kyrie

by:  Ellen Bryant Voigt

When does a childhood end?  Mothers
sew a piece of money inside a sock,
fathers unfold the map of the world, and boys
go off to war--that's an end, whether
they come back wrapped in the flag or waving it.
Sister and I were what they kissed goodbye,
complicitous in the long dream left behind.
On one page, willful innocence,
                                                     on the next
an Army Captain writing from the ward
with few details, and much regret--a kindness
she wouldn't forgive, and wouldn't be reconciled
to her soldier lost, or me in my luck, or the petals
strewn on the grass, or the boys still on the playground
routing evil with their little sticks.