The Warrior: A Mother's Story of a Son at War by Frances Richey

Here is an excerpt from Frances Richey’s website about her book:
When Frances Richey's son, Ben, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and a Green Beret, went on the first of his two deployments to Iraq, Richey began to write. The Warrior is her urgent and intensely personal exploration of what a mother is feeling as her only son goes off to war, as she says good-bye to him, misses him, prays for him, and waits for him to come home.

At the heart of this memoir in verse lies a mother's love for her son-a son from whom she feels distant both literally and metaphorically, for she is opposed to the war but nevertheless realizes that she needs to understand and support the choices he has made.

From KILL SCHOOL

That was the summer he rappelled

down mountains on rope

that from a distance looked thin

as the dragline of a spider,

barely visible, the tension

he descended

into the made-up

state of Pineland

with soldiers from his class.

They started with a rabbit,

and since my son was the only one

who’d never hunted,

he went first. He described it:

moonlight, the softness

of fur, another pulse

against his chest.

You can read the rest of the poem here.



From LETTERS

-1

Before he left for combat,

he took care of everything:

someone to plow the driveway,

cut the grass.

And the letter he wrote me,

just in case, sealed

somewhere, in a drawer;

can’t be opened,

must be opened

if he doesn’t return.

You can read the rest of the poem here.

Inventory
This is a poem Frances Richey wrote after she visited with her son when he was preparing to deploy to Iraq in the fall of 2004.

To My Son in Iraq

Frances Richey

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At Wild Rose Reader, I have an original “tortoise” acrostic and reviews of two pictures books with fables written in verse.

At Blue Rose Girls, I have a poem by Jack Spicer entitled Psychoanalysis: An Elegy.

Tabatha A. Yeats has the Poetry Friday Roundup this week.