Elizabeth S. Wolf - Poems

Elizabeth S. Wolf lives in MA with her daughter and several pets, where she maintains a day job as a Technical Metadata Librarian. Elizabeth has previously published poems in local anthologies (Merrimac Mic: Gleanings from the First Year; 30 Poems in November 2014; Amherst Storybook Project).  The Amherst Storybook Project is published in print and on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6d3pUd8jR0

                 Too Common Prayer

for Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown CT 12/14/12

Close your eyes, hold hands.
Lead us not into temptation:
Close your eyes, hold hands.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death:
Close your eyes, hold hands.
He came for the children:
Close your eyes, hold hands.
Have mercy on the souls set loose too soon
From bodies so small, laying in their graves:
Close your eyes, hold hands.
Afflict the comfortable
Who know what they must do
And yet do not:
Close your eyes, hold hands.
All of us are changed.
Close your eyes, hold hands.
Let none of us remain unmoved.
Close your eyes, hold hands.
For any of us is next in line:
All of us are next in line.
Close your eyes. Hold hands.
May we never walk this way again.
 
**
News photos of the children evacuating Sandy Hook showed rows of children with their eyes closed, some holding onto rope as they were led past the carnage. The children were instructed to ‘close your eyes, and hold hands’.

                  What If
 
What if today
there were no shootings.
What if today, there were no
beatings, even if dinner is
late or cold. What if today
everyone had enough dinner.
What if today, those who call themselves
lovers actually respected each other.
What if today, children were
seen and believed and
treasured. What if today
we greeted our neighbors.
What if today
is all the time we have;
what if today
is enough;
what if.
 

 
          Every Addict is Somebody’s Child

“I made sure my daughter died with good credit and no police record. Imagine that.” Doug Griffin
 

i.
Grandma’s pills are gone
again, and my wife’s bracelet
from our 15th anniversary, it’s
missing, and the fifty dollars
stashed in my toolkit
isn’t there. What the hell.
If anything is broken,
daddy will fix it. But
deep deep inside
there’s a hole
in her soul.
 
I get so angry.  I yell and threaten
and tell her I’m done-
I’ve gone as far as I can go-
but then look at her and know
I will love and protect my child
for the rest of my life. So
I convince the cop she’s a
good kid who got sleepy
after curfew; I drag her butt
out of bed to the
therapist and the meetings and the
unemployment office when she
loses her job. Again. 
When she tells me
the lights are going out, daddy,
first I freeze and then
I pay the electric. I tell her
she needs to be more responsible
but she crumbles, crying, she has
disappointed me- again-
and she feels so bad, so bad.
So I hold her and tell her I love her,
but even while I’m hugging her I know
she’s going out to use again
to smother this fresh pain.
Because deep down inside
there’s a hole
in her soul.
 
ii
I was down in my work room
making something, making a mess,
thinking about how we got here
and what is wrong with that kid
and how do I fix this, how do I fix her-
  is this a disease
     or is that an excuse-
when there was a knock on the door.
And even though I told her a hundred times
this was going to happen- told her
some day she would wake up dead-
until the man in uniform said they
couldn’t revive her, I never came close
to imagining this pain, how much it
hurts. So bad. My baby is
gone.  All of my life
up until that day-
gone.  When she died,
everything stopped:
when she died,
something
dropped.
Deep down inside,
there’s a hole
in my soul.
 
**
This poem is based on a series in the local paper on the heroin crisis in New England, and in particular on this article:
 
http://www.newburyportnews.com/heroin_epidemic/creating-the-courtney-griffin-sober-house-important-and-bittersweet/article_c11a86b3-17d0-5aa1-acd3-2c675ba631cb.html
 

                      Because

​Because I survived
I must speak out;
Because I survived
I must blend to pass.
                  
Because I have endured
months in your wards and
hours crawling the floors of welfare offices,
stared through plate glass windows of restaurants
hungering in the streets,
I have seen the naked bones
of society's fortress.
 
Because I have emerged, risen from ashes
earned degrees by day, working
flat on my back through long groping nights,
have learned to walk and talk and
dress like you, to carry credit cards
and expense receipts,
I must blind myself to my past.
                  
Because I have been scarred
I must be a revolutionary.
 
Because I have tasted your brand of success
I have learned to fear passion and loss.