THE THREAD | Sinking sister of Lusitania, pray for us

War might not be claiming our headlines right now, yet every day children are caught in its clutches.

Today I am sharing a long poem I wrote after a visit to the World War I Museum in Kansas City. On that day I stood in one of the exhibits, struck by Fred Spear's painting of a drowning mother and child, feeling bothered that the image was used as propaganda to enlist American soldiers. I couldn't quite figure out what was bothering me, and as I walked through the museum I realized that I was silently praying to the drowning mother, as if she were the patron saint of something important. This poem is what my prayer became.

 

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ENLIST
 
Sinking sister of Lusitania, pray for us.

You who do not mean

to loosen your grip

with every slipped breath

and yet you let go.
 
You who sink               yet seek to save
the child in your arms.

Think of the edge of the ship

one last time.

The cargo carried below the deck.

The baggage at your side. The easy chair

you claimed for yourself at starboard.

The glint of the three sisters in Orion’s belt

holding you            

buoyant

above the fears this voyage released in you.

 
Think of the prayer you said to those stars
as you close your eyes and the surface recedes.
 
Or do not close your eyes.

Take in the growing darkness,

knowing the sparks above are not stars

but shards            of a ship             aflame.

 
You with no name and sinking,
hold your infant close all the same.

The small paw stretching

playfully            as if slapping your neck.

This small god’s adoration, his appreciation

for you bringing him from womb            

and now through another.

This small god’s desire

for your attention:

Look at me, mother,             look me in the eye

I cannot see you now,          where am I

hold me closer          

why                     are you letting                             me go?
 
You don’t know         you don’t know
your gown now flows around you

a drifting bank of snow

an iceberg sloughing off

 breaking up.

 
Your hand will slip       and your child will drown without you.
You will never be found nor your body recovered.
You will not some day be chance discovered.
 
But this image of you
        taking final breaths                    clinging

to the child you only hoped

to carry across             an ocean            to save,
 
the one             who now heaves             and huffs

with rattle-            sized lungs

now sloshing            with saltwater                    the two of you
will not            

be saved . . . 

 
but this image of you     mother and child
this moment of your death

 white gown       pale skin

your shimmering shivering child

will be painted against a dark backdrop of ocean.
 
Only one word will appear on the painting
and hung on every post in America:
Enlist! Enlist!             Let’s go to war       your painting will insist.
Let’s go to war          our mothers are drowning.
Let’s go to war           our children are dead.
 
Let’s go enlist        sign up to resist
the encroaching forces             over there

over here            or somewhere near

nearer than we will believe.

 
Pray for us, patron saint of sinking,

you holy mother of drowned innocence.

Pray for us to enlist against

whatever force washed

a lone Syrian child ashore

covered in seaweed and caught by us all

in the web of our glowing screens.
 
Enlist us against the cage containing a child

            drowning in a sea

of other children

and discovered the next morning
on the concrete floor not breathing        muted
on our televisions.
 
Pray for the mother escaping the fire

to soak smoking clothes in the ocean surf,

keep her from drifting too far out,

keep        the sand      from shifting.

 
Pray for the drowned       pray for the drowning

pray for that small distance in between:

The gasp        the clasped hand         the buoyant heave.
 
Pray for us who want to enlist

in something other

than someone else’s war             anything other than war

something no algorithm can ever discover

and what that might be         

or might be made for.

 
Your closed eyes        your grip not loosened just yet

and yet

your legs no longer kicking

your body unclenching

relenting to your own untethered mass.
 
Sinking sister, hold us tight.

If drowning

is all that we have left to do,               

hold us close and do not let go.

 
Look at me       sister      look me in the eye

I am here    I do

not know what to do with all that remains

buoyant in me       somehow still alive.

Pray for me      that anything deep 
             still refusing this fate
will rise toward the light,

gasp and groan

and revive.
 

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What I'm reading: NYT's special section "America's Mothers Are in Crisis"
What I'm listening to: Before The Flood

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Keep warm and carry coffee,

Andrew