THE WARRIOR

my sister had the misfortune of being born with a spirit too big for her small body.

a hero’s soul born to an unheroic age meant, I think, for some grander stage .

the revolution might have been her calling… A Parisian dam, breasts bare,

tearing down the Bastille with her two hands!

or an Amazon on the battlefields of ancient Troy-

chopping down the Myrmidon while screaming down the gods!

or a suffragette walking arm and arm with Emma G.-

sisters chained together on the courthouse steps!

but instead she was born too late for bra burnings, too young to protest Vietnam. now too old for youthful revolutions.

in this mediocre age of exiled heroes and the long deferred dream…

she and others of her self same rage idle their days in silent expectation of some great and secret something that never will arrive.

and so left to their own devices, like well trained solders without a cause to stand behind,

they turn their weapons on themselves and fight the losing battle from within.

(Poetry by Dane O'Hara)