Hand in Hand — No More ?
—for children forcibly separated from their parents, wherever they are.
A photo in an old family album startles me
— it turns out that someone with a camera
captured the moment of my earliest memory:
A small girl—I, apparently--
stands alone on still-chubby legs
her hands reach out, grasp empty air
mouth wide open, she cries intensely.
Two bystanders stand impassive, bemused.
I recognize the setting and the event.
I feel anew my mother’s hand let go of mine,
her brief disappearance, and my terror.
Here is my first glimpse of a world
where I could be alone on my own
and no one would care about me.
There’s a kind of grace in not knowing
such a world —the grace of the bond
between parent and child. I sense its presence
among the young families that often crowd
the paths around our fisherman’s wharf,
where I too walk now, as shadow observer.
I watch the parents, the children,
the hands— small hands in large ones.
The boys and girls know the touch
of their mothers, their fathers
—hands holding theirs,
hands that can lift them, protect them.
These children don’t yet know fear,
not the kind I felt all those years ago
when my mother seemed lost to me.
They have not yet felt the rupture
of that early bond—once it happens
innocence itself is lost. It befalls
each of us eventually, inevitably.
Eventually, yes, but much too early
for the far too many who, led by parents,
fled hardship and peril to seek refuge
in our formerly welcoming land.
On the sidelines, helpless, we saw them
face the cold stare of the state, the shattering
of young worlds — in the thousands.
We witnessed little ones snatched
from their parents’ arms. We heard the voices
of the bereft, of babies, toddlers weeping,
calling out — Mama! Mama! Pappi! Pappi!
Voices, echoes, drowning in a dark void.
The sidelines erupted in outrage, and Justice spoke
—we started to see reunions of those torn apart.
The parents wept now, with joy, relief, in helpless guilt.
The children, more often than not, seemed stunned.
Innocents no more — will they ever find new trust?
Still, they are the fortunate ones.
And what about the rest?
—the hundreds still stranded, forgotten.
—the countless still coming, clinging to hope.
Hands still reach out, meet empty air.
Voices still call, echo unheard.
In this time of our despair,
will power and empathy never link hands?
Jacks Peak
for L --
Back now, on a trail I’ve not walked
since the times we spent here together
in hills that for me are still filled
with you, who first brought me here,
around here, to show me a gate
you had built—or did you take me
here to say, I’ve wanted to kiss you all day,
because that’s what you said,
and I answered, why don’t you?
This place — its trees, soil, air — they all breathe you,
and I’m back in the sojourn we shared, and the day
we drove round and around nearby roads in silence,
knowing talk was by then of no use, when the end
was too clearly in sight.
Sitting on San Diego
It was on a blue-sky, blue-sea day that my steps
happened to carry me along the Monterey marina,
where benches line the walkway, each one marked
with a saint’s name—in remembrance, probably,
of the Sicilian fishermen, who needed what protection
they could get. Nowadays the benches are occupied
by panhandlers, men mostly, many of them homeless.
They look out to sea, as we all do, imagining, maybe,
that one of the boats docked there will carry them off
somewhere, to something — away . . .
I pass by—when there’s cash in my pocket, they benefit.
That day my eye was caught by a sign a man held up:
I feel
I neeeed
to wine a bit!
Pleeeees!
I wanted to snap a picture but didn’t want to scare him off.
I liked his pun and told him so, told him I was cashless.
—Oh, that’s ok, he smiled, and I walked on.
After my hour-long walk, there he still sat
in the same position, holding the sign as before.
I slowed down again to remark on his patience
to keep sitting there so upright, the sign held high.
What else do I have to do? was his reply. Cheerful.
I imagined I had an answer to that, but I shrugged
smiled, about to move on—yet he wasn’t done:
He wanted me to know he used to live in San Diego,
pointed to his bench: “San Diego”—he’d chosen that one.
City’s changed, he said, too big, not like before.
He’d left to do prospecting, somewhere . . .
Was it Montana? (I wasn’t listening well by now).
He’d found copper (was that the metal?),
recovered some amount (it meant nothing to me).
You’re an adventurous guy, I said, looking for an exit line,
sensing a cough coming on, needing a restroom stop.
Still he talked on--I’m just forty, and, as my aunt says,
you’ve got to do it while you’re young, so . . .
I wondered then what he’d meant by claiming
he had nothing to do but sit and hold his sign.
If I had asked, he might have told me.
I could have learned about a life unlike my own,
but, not about to take the time, I nodded
smiled, wished him well, went on my way.
The next day I came back and found him gone.
I took a picture of “his” bench. Walked on.
It was another blue-sky, blue-sea day.
Marina Romani’s work can be found in a variety of print and on-line literary journals, including the CWC Literary Review, Homestead Review, Porter Gulch Review, previous issues of the Monterey Poetry Review, and the Canadian Poetry Pacific. She is the author of two books: Child Interwoven (2016), a collection of memories in poem and prose of Marina’s early childhood, spent in China and the Philippines during the years of World War II and its aftermath; Chiaroscuro Eye (2018), a set of twenty-two poems that view varieties of experience through an interplay of light and shadow.
—for children forcibly separated from their parents, wherever they are.
A photo in an old family album startles me
— it turns out that someone with a camera
captured the moment of my earliest memory:
A small girl—I, apparently--
stands alone on still-chubby legs
her hands reach out, grasp empty air
mouth wide open, she cries intensely.
Two bystanders stand impassive, bemused.
I recognize the setting and the event.
I feel anew my mother’s hand let go of mine,
her brief disappearance, and my terror.
Here is my first glimpse of a world
where I could be alone on my own
and no one would care about me.
There’s a kind of grace in not knowing
such a world —the grace of the bond
between parent and child. I sense its presence
among the young families that often crowd
the paths around our fisherman’s wharf,
where I too walk now, as shadow observer.
I watch the parents, the children,
the hands— small hands in large ones.
The boys and girls know the touch
of their mothers, their fathers
—hands holding theirs,
hands that can lift them, protect them.
These children don’t yet know fear,
not the kind I felt all those years ago
when my mother seemed lost to me.
They have not yet felt the rupture
of that early bond—once it happens
innocence itself is lost. It befalls
each of us eventually, inevitably.
Eventually, yes, but much too early
for the far too many who, led by parents,
fled hardship and peril to seek refuge
in our formerly welcoming land.
On the sidelines, helpless, we saw them
face the cold stare of the state, the shattering
of young worlds — in the thousands.
We witnessed little ones snatched
from their parents’ arms. We heard the voices
of the bereft, of babies, toddlers weeping,
calling out — Mama! Mama! Pappi! Pappi!
Voices, echoes, drowning in a dark void.
The sidelines erupted in outrage, and Justice spoke
—we started to see reunions of those torn apart.
The parents wept now, with joy, relief, in helpless guilt.
The children, more often than not, seemed stunned.
Innocents no more — will they ever find new trust?
Still, they are the fortunate ones.
And what about the rest?
—the hundreds still stranded, forgotten.
—the countless still coming, clinging to hope.
Hands still reach out, meet empty air.
Voices still call, echo unheard.
In this time of our despair,
will power and empathy never link hands?
Jacks Peak
for L --
Back now, on a trail I’ve not walked
since the times we spent here together
in hills that for me are still filled
with you, who first brought me here,
around here, to show me a gate
you had built—or did you take me
here to say, I’ve wanted to kiss you all day,
because that’s what you said,
and I answered, why don’t you?
This place — its trees, soil, air — they all breathe you,
and I’m back in the sojourn we shared, and the day
we drove round and around nearby roads in silence,
knowing talk was by then of no use, when the end
was too clearly in sight.
Sitting on San Diego
It was on a blue-sky, blue-sea day that my steps
happened to carry me along the Monterey marina,
where benches line the walkway, each one marked
with a saint’s name—in remembrance, probably,
of the Sicilian fishermen, who needed what protection
they could get. Nowadays the benches are occupied
by panhandlers, men mostly, many of them homeless.
They look out to sea, as we all do, imagining, maybe,
that one of the boats docked there will carry them off
somewhere, to something — away . . .
I pass by—when there’s cash in my pocket, they benefit.
That day my eye was caught by a sign a man held up:
I feel
I neeeed
to wine a bit!
Pleeeees!
I wanted to snap a picture but didn’t want to scare him off.
I liked his pun and told him so, told him I was cashless.
—Oh, that’s ok, he smiled, and I walked on.
After my hour-long walk, there he still sat
in the same position, holding the sign as before.
I slowed down again to remark on his patience
to keep sitting there so upright, the sign held high.
What else do I have to do? was his reply. Cheerful.
I imagined I had an answer to that, but I shrugged
smiled, about to move on—yet he wasn’t done:
He wanted me to know he used to live in San Diego,
pointed to his bench: “San Diego”—he’d chosen that one.
City’s changed, he said, too big, not like before.
He’d left to do prospecting, somewhere . . .
Was it Montana? (I wasn’t listening well by now).
He’d found copper (was that the metal?),
recovered some amount (it meant nothing to me).
You’re an adventurous guy, I said, looking for an exit line,
sensing a cough coming on, needing a restroom stop.
Still he talked on--I’m just forty, and, as my aunt says,
you’ve got to do it while you’re young, so . . .
I wondered then what he’d meant by claiming
he had nothing to do but sit and hold his sign.
If I had asked, he might have told me.
I could have learned about a life unlike my own,
but, not about to take the time, I nodded
smiled, wished him well, went on my way.
The next day I came back and found him gone.
I took a picture of “his” bench. Walked on.
It was another blue-sky, blue-sea day.
Marina Romani’s work can be found in a variety of print and on-line literary journals, including the CWC Literary Review, Homestead Review, Porter Gulch Review, previous issues of the Monterey Poetry Review, and the Canadian Poetry Pacific. She is the author of two books: Child Interwoven (2016), a collection of memories in poem and prose of Marina’s early childhood, spent in China and the Philippines during the years of World War II and its aftermath; Chiaroscuro Eye (2018), a set of twenty-two poems that view varieties of experience through an interplay of light and shadow.