April is National Poetry Month and each year I get very excited. I spend the month reading a poem each day and trying to write a poem every day. I attend poetry readings and immerse myself in creativity.
This year I will be in court fighting for my daughter's future. But I will keep a poem in my heart, in my pocket and my notebook.
Justice, Come Down
By Minnie Bruce Pratt
A huge sound waits, bound in the ice,
in the icicle roots, in the buds of snow
on fir branches, in the falling silence
of snow, glittering in the sun, brilliant
as a swarm of gnats, nothing but hovering
wings at midday. With the sun comes noise.
Tongues of ice break free, fall, shatter,
splinter, speak. If I could write the words.
Simple, like turning a page, to say Write
what happened, but this means a return
to the cold place where I am being punished.
Alone to the stony circle where I am frozen,
the empty space, children, mother, father gone,
lover gone away. There grief still sits
and waits, grim, numb, keeping company with
anger. I can smell my anger like sulfur-
struck matches. I wanted what had happened
to be a wall to burn, a window to smash.
At my fist the pieces would sparkle and fall.
All would be changed. I would not be alone.
Instead I have told my story over and over
at parties, on the edge of meetings, my life
clenched in my fist, my eyes brittle as glass.
Ashamed, people turned their faces away
from the woman ranting, asking: Justice,
stretch out your hand. Come down, glittering,
from where you have hidden yourself away.
from The Dirt She Ate: New and Selected Poems (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003
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