Everyday I sit with poor clients They seek food and medical help What the poor need The woman today brought two small boys Soft-breeze silent Who let their mother do her work with me We were filling out passport forms Her husband is a prisoner Caught driving without a license She expects his deportation She cannot make it alone as a single parent She will return to Guatemala With the boys with passports in tow I filled out the forms I watched her thinking of you To tell you this has occurred I ask you to see this with your heart Because neither you nor I Can understand Madre Soltera Awakens at five Awakens her girls – five and two For her day Without her husband – deported She will pick peppers in the sun She goes it alone Lost orphan rugged terrain …………………………………………………….. Today is Memorial Day Think of Antietam The Cornfield’s orgy of death In three hours 10,000 dead Walk the cornrows You cannot but feel The unburied dead Longing for lost love In the darkness of memory Forgotten dead forgotten war Yet at Antietam These spirits will seep through your soul Longing for life unlived Young women – mothers without partners Long for the grace of a good man To re--father their children To escape the shards of a broken family Drunk husbands arrested deported re—married Dark depths of her sadness Failed lover companion partner She sweeps other people’s rooms She cuts other people’s lawns She paints other people’s houses To pay the rent to feed the kids Matchmaker Hover over the wakeful turnings of her night Bring her where Young men with unfinished lives abound Walk the cornrows with hearts alive Usurp longing Create weddings Madres Solteras With spirits of the unburied dead Untoward idea Yet every day they come Pleading For food stamps for Medicaid For one who cares

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