Bad Dreams
I have found
To be a mother is to fear all horrors.
Served nightly on the television screen,
the bruises, broken heads, and broken lives,
stretched out to entertain, scene after scene;
they peel their characters’ souls, peel back their secrets
like the skin of a grape, purple and raw;
and then comes the News to inform us, closing in
on latest images of this year’s war.
You see a mother’s son, his dead head muffled close
in a stranger’s coat, he’s broken and defiled;
crying out, Let not the world do this to you;
my child, my child!
The baby gazes back from his warm crib,
while I bend over him, panicked and wild
, his eyes are webs of sleep and innocence:
a child of wonder, like that woman’s child.
Eve Kimber has been writing for so many years that she suspects her style has gone out of fashion and she’s reinventing herself to come round again, like vintage clothes. One published book and poems in Poetry Review and other magazines. See more here: wordsaremychocolate@wordpress.com