[Critique Group 1] My June Submission

[Deanna Noriega]

16 lines

Lost Father

 

My father was 20 years old,

When he went to fight in a police action.

A grenade fragment destroyed who he had been

So I never knew the man my mother married.

 

I carry his Apache blood

But favor my white grandmother in looks.

My spirit is more like my great grandmother,

A gentle resilient strong Ojibwa woman.

 

My mother was only seventeen

An army corporal's young wife at my birth.

She was a child bride married at age fifteen. 

She returned to her people before I was two.

  

Thus it was I missed knowing him 

Before he returned a violent stranger.

Gone was the man who brought mom yellow roses

And carried his infant daughter home with great joy. 

 

 

 

 

DeAnna Quietwater Noriega

Cell: 573-544-3511

Email:  <mailto:dqnoriega at gmail.com> dqnoriega at gmail.com

Author of Fifty Years of Walking with Friends

https://www.dldbooks.com/dqnoriega/

 

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