print previewback ELLEN BRYANT VOIGT | from Kyrie
When does a childhood end? Mothers
sew a piece of money inside a sock,
fathers unfold the map of the world, and boys
go off to war—that’s an end, whether
they come back wrapped in the flag or waving it.
Sister and I were what they kissed goodbye,
complicitous in the long dream left behind.
On one page, willful innocence,
on the next
an Army Captain writing from the ward
with few details and much regret—a kindness
she wouldn’t forgive, and wouldn’t be reconciled
to her soldier lost, or me in my luck, or the petals
strewn on the grass, or the boys still on the playground
routing evil with their little sticks.
