I had a conversation with a friend today that reminded me of this poem. I wrote it about ten years ago. Maybe tomorrow during our snow day I'll actually post a new poem. : )

~ Engaged

 With the singular focus of a refugee

Cuthbert waits in the middle

of the middle of Iowa

for papers to go from in-box to in-box,

abiding till the day he can call his wife

and say, “Come, come.  God Almighty, come.

Hold that boy tight and come.”

He could have despised us

for our complacency

or at least for our ignorance.

Sierra Leone was a one-night stand

as headlines go

and if my life depended upon it

I’d still not know it from its neighbors

in an atlas.

But Cuthbert was kind and, though lonely,

told his story only when asked.

There were calm descriptions of chaos,

brutality, panic, evil.

There were dry-eyed accounts of colleagues slain,

of fleeing, of expecting to be found.

And, one afternoon, the story of a friend

who worked in a diamond mine,

escaping with his life

but without his right hand.

So today I slide the ring from my finger

and put it in a box.

I can’t get rid of it.

It tells its own story

of my college sweetheart who secretly saved

for months to buy it,

how he took me to a mountain stream

he knew was my favorite,

how he praised me as only a suitor

or a widower could,

how he got his yes and his kiss,

how I clenched my fist

for fear I’d lose it in the cold, fast water.

How ephemeral were those months

when it was the only ring I wore.

But today it goes in a box

because of the other story it tells,

because I need to do something

even if it’s nearly nothing,

because if I’d hide it from Cuthbert’s eyes

it belongs in a dark place.