Author Adrienne Morris

The Writing Life at Middlemay Farm

The Unknown Soldier

One sharp pain. One utterance of surprise. Oh.
He leaves no great philosophies. There are no medals, no headstone.
Only a few strings left attached to this world.

Letters in government files
The sacrifice a mother makes to prove her relation to the boy whose life is opened up on paper
for a pension she is denied.

Is it invasion to hang on their every word --  
the words of intimacy and filial love in these letters?
I am his family too and he is mine.

These strings scribbled on cheap, creased stationery
little ways of knowing a great deal (though I knew him
without knowing it all my life ).

Apologizing for his handwriting and blaming his pen.
Butter from a country doctor as he sits in a hospital bed.
No letters from home yet.

Despair in one string, bravado in another;
A book sent home to remember him by and
I'm a tuff buck now.

Have brother plant these pair seeds
They be big as a fist and
From Vermont.
 
He spells as he spoke:
haint, dast, Upstate I be
The book cost me dear.

The last string of words
money sent home for mother's new house
never be afraid to ask, I gladly go without.

He is my muse and my relation
All these years later a picture is found
and we look the same.

I've known him and I have no doubts.
Never question God's creative force,
or His happy coincidences.

The heavens open sometimes
and the saints speak and pray --
happy for reunion.