When my father waved goodbye
sobs bent him bowed over
his cane, while the car of his
children disappeared.
Terrible fear is love
with its constant emptying and seizure
of portents and assurances.

Long ago, walking in the early morning in Belgium,
his pack chafing his shoulders, his rifle jostling –
he couldn’t see the next stretch, quiet
except for the feet of his platoon pattering,
and the sleepiest river gliding over its worn bed –
he thought he had lost the weight of himself.
 
Samn Stockwell has been widely published, and her two books, Theater of Animals and Recital, won the National Poetry Series and the Editor’s Prize at Elixir, respectively. Recent work has appeared in Poet Lore, Salamander and Spillway, and work is forthcoming in Gargoyle, The Literary Review, and others.