The Middle of Sorrows​

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We too will disappear one day,

Leaving only the faint sigh of stars

breathing in the night sky, low

slap of cattle brushing up

against fence posts as they

 

head home to slumber.

We women of a certain age,

our best days behind us

like broken mouth cows

at auction for cheap.

 

Our sons and one daughter

all buried, flown back

on military cargo planes

from a country as mountainous

as our prairie is flat,

a country that took our babies

as we have taken theirs.

 

We collect ourselves

at the diner most mornings, nursing

our coffee over an hour,

commenting on grandchildren’s soccer games

or sometimes sharing recipes

out of the county newspaper

like normal people—whatever

 

it takes to avoid that sorrow

held over each of us,

needing just a few moments

to sit in the sun of what was.

 

What was has disappeared.

 

What is left is imaginings

of final moments, medals

and folded flags tucked away

in spare bedroom drawers,

husbands and other children

never feeling that tearing
apart as we have.

We know it will never get better.
 

We know there is no salve—
only a gloaming that keeps us
in a barely lit purgatory.
 

And so we wait for the end of sorrows.