poem

 The Defeated

I gravitate toward the defeated.

My community is anyone familiar with loss. 

We commiserate, lick our wounds,

Get strong again and rise.

Look around, we’re not alone

We see it in the whites of all our eyes.

Next, we’re making love and forming clans

Pledging loyalty and everlasting friendship

Surreptitiously sharing the same hopes and plans.

But do not mistake us for a bunch of losers 

We are only talking here of loss

And its fellowship of impoverishment.

We are the living homage

To everything once cherished,

A band of broken hearted brothers 

And sisters circling the wagons

To guard the last dear thing

Each of us has ever won

11/14/24