Grace (in all it's many forms)

Remember, awhile back, when I wrote of a small orchard in my backyard, seeded with red clover and with daffodils scattered all around?  Well, this is it!  A small area in my back garden looks just like I had hoped!

I neglected to post the poem from a few lab meetings back - the lab just got busy with field sampling preparations and I was traveling and it was spring and well, we live in the south and it is warm and the temptations are many.  But I didn't want to forget to post this one - a sonnet about war that is in such contrast to my small field of red clover with the ocassional daffodil in bloom.  This sonnet is unpublished, and Katherine, who knows the poet, Tony Barnstone, received permission for me to present it here.  He's evidently from quite an artistic family - as one can tell from this fascinating site.  Katherine shared this one with us several lab meetings back, and my recommendation is to read it outloud - if only to yourself,  or to another if you are so fortunate.  Sonnets always sound so differently when spoken I think.

Grace under Pressure
by Tony Barnstone

When the potato masher hand grenade
flew in the hollow, Mark, the quiet boy,
looked at me with such sorrow. Then he lay
down on the thing.  He knew his death would buy
our lives, and so he spent it all, just tossed
his future in the pot like a big spender
in Vegas.  Damn him, who can pay that loss
off?  I can't.  "Neither borrower nor lender"
was what my pop taught me.  For what he gave,
with rag-doll arms spread wide when the bomb blew
him off the earth, I kissed his dirty face,
closed his dead eyes.  I knew I had to live
my life a cleaner way, the way he flew
into the sky (before he fell). With grace.

                                (U.S. Marine, Iwo Jima)

Comments

[M Sinclair Stevens (Texas)]

Beautiful photo. Devastatingly beautiful poem.

[Pam]

Thanks - and welcome! I must give the credit for the poem selection to Katherine, in my laboratory. She shares one with us almost weekly - and I agree that this one is beautiful, and perhaps defines 'grace' better than anything I've heard in awhile.

[Pat]

The photo and poem seem to go together. Was that your intention?

[Pam]

Pat, I thought they went together too - I'm glad that you thought so as well. It's such a beautiful poem, I wasn't sure if I could find something to pair with it, but this image seemed to work.