Must I love? Is there no other way?
% Anne Morrow Lindbergh
(
Her heart clicked off
when she saw the bones,
so small, so white,
her son, stolen,
buried in the woods
where she ran screaming
from tree to tree;
and the trees, in pity,
let go their leaves.
Emerging from woods,
blood sludged with sorrow,
she flew to an island
where no bird sings,
tried to climb higher
than pain could fly.
While thorny hedges closed her
in, grief seeped slowly
from her veins.
Awake,
she turned her mirrors from the
wall. She would re-enter the sky,
steer a course somewhere
below the stars,
above the geese honking north,
head for home.
But where was home? she
wondered. And how would she know
when she got there?
And what would she do
if she heard
from the woods
some cold New Jersey night
her son cry out to her for water
other small comfort?