Laura Zucca-Scott’s most recent poem to appear here was On Your Twelfth Birthday published as part of Contributor Series 11: On Birthdays in June 2012.
A time of war
By Laura Zucca-Scott
It was a time of war
And yet you were still a boy
Farming the land on foreign soil
You told me the story
Walking along the sidewalk
A perfect stranger
Who saw my country
Before my time
When my father was still a child
You did not talk about the horrors or the pain
You told me of sharing your bread in the fields
And smelling the land
So close to your heart
Were you just a kind spirit?
Or you truly saw brotherhood
Beyond the barriers
Beyond the blood staining the fields
And as your crinkled eyes grew brighter
You remembered flying back home
One cold Christmas Eve
And hugging your baby brother
You had never met before
And feeling tomorrow
Was a possibility again
War represents sorrow, but you turned it around. Nice job.