Between Slaughter and Exile
by Edward A. Dougherty
Like these lands we travel through,
I have grown weary, so rough, so dry.
I wet a finger to give suck
but it never lasts longs. When the baby
cries, the sound comes sharper. It cuts me.
Some didn’t believe the stories
of soldiers pouring south, what they did
to the women, to children.
Made the men watch then let them live.
Some didn’t believe, but my husband
did not hesitate: we cannot wait, he said.
I knew it all true: too still, the women
were still as stone. They tried to hide
their always-wet tunics. Never any babies.
All the men turned into camel-drivers,
quick with the whip, but their eyes,
those dark eyes, saw no destination, only away.
We travel between slaughter and exile.
A foreign land, people who already hate us.
How will they ever take us in? What will we do
when they turn us back? Afraid ourselves,
we instruct the little ones to be quiet,
but an infant only understands hunger.
I lay him against me, try the finger trick;
he snuggles in and falls asleep, his lips
still moving. The moon was full
but is now empty, like me. I was a child
but now am woman, a mother. He is mine
and he is not mine. By the fire, some men
growl for blood. They talk of blades.
One jumps up, his shadow monstrous,
he jabs the air, thrust and jab, then he too
falls still. I hear him panting. Is this all
I can give this child—a world of rage and shame,
of bloodshed and vengeance? The baby rouses,
gurgling, but before his hunger-cries
tear open the night and endanger us all,
a woman in our tent, a stranger, her dark face
tracked with tear-streams all crusted now,
she opens her hands to me, and I give her
my child. She opens her robes,
and he feeds. He is a child now
but will become a man. I will teach him.
I will say: That is the night
I remembered the force
that saves the world. Once,
I whispered yes, and I said it again
and I go on saying it.
Edward A. Dougherty has lived and worked in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York for nearly 30 years. He is the author of 11 collections of poetry, including Grace Street and 10048. Vita Poetica's Interviews Editor, Emily Chambers Sharpe, discussed the spiritual wanderings he writes about in his book of essays, Journey Work: Crafting a Life of Poetry & Spirit. Find the interview in the Summer 2021 issue.
