How Helpless

like someone
in a foreign land
with a daypack
of only your own
provincial tongue.

Poems are meant
to speak in metaphor,
but this is your truth,
your horrifying truth.

I know you
only so much.
Even so,
this much I know:

Every atom of oxygen
you would have forgone;
deeply into alien earth
you would have sunk;
a ravage of tears
you did, indeed, weep.

All to keep
her breathing,
all to keep
her here.

(cc) Karen G. Johnston