Poetry

A Daughter’s Loss
By William A. Cook

She took her anger like an ancient curse
And stuffed it deep within her purse,
Down where the shadows lie
To keep it safe and never die.

And there she carried it for years
A refuge against her fears,
Her anger now her sole delight
For she had put all love to flight.

And there it burned against her breast,
Her brooding heart a smoldering nest,
Where love of self she sought to please
Judging love of others a disease.

The years went by in hurried flight
While she indulged in self delight
Believing she had vanquished him,
The father, who made her life so grim.

And then he passed to his reward
A silent victim of her discord.
But she found joy in this release
Believing finally she’d have peace,

Until the years caught up with her
And she lay waiting at death’s door.
Then she knew what she had lost
And what her brooding hate had cost.

Years lost to love and sown in anger
Are years lived once and gone forever.

© Copyright William A. Cook.  All rights reserved.

The Ballad of Jimmy Byrd
by William A. Cook

One fateful day in early June,
The morning sun ablaze on high,
A lone man on a lonely road
Whistled a tune before he died.

The birds above all sang with him
As he ambled beneath the trees;
He heard the glory of that morn
Before he was driven to his knees.

He shambled slowly down the road,
The sky above him fiery white,
As in the wavy, distant haze
A tattered truck came into sight.

The birds above all sang with him
As he ambled beneath the trees;
He saw the glory of that morn
Before he was driven to his knees.

The pick-up slowed beside him then,
Shining bright in the morning light;
Three Jasper men called out to him,
And he shuddered at the sight.

The birds above all sang with him
As he ambled beneath the trees;
He felt the glory of that morn
Before he was driven to his knees.

They slyly smiled as they stopped
To give that lonely man a ride;
"We're going down to Jasper town,"
They said. "You needn't be afraid."

The birds above all sang with him
As he ambled beneath the trees;
He knew the glory of that morn
Before he was driven to his knees.

He froze inside as terror grabbed,
And fear rose quickly to his eyes;
"That's OK, but I can walk.
It’s not too far to go," he cries.

The birds above stopped singing
As he trembled beneath the trees;
And then the glory of the morn
Broke into shadows at his knees.

He saw the blackened swastika,
A sudden push against the door,
And swiftly, in a moment's time,
He lay sprawled on the roadway floor.

The birds above all lost their song
As they beat him beneath the trees,
And the glory that was morning
Lay scattered at his knees.

The dust from the road seared his eyes
When they wrestled him to his knees,
Their laughter now a mockery
As he looked upward to the trees.

The birds above were silent
As he lay sprawled beneath the trees;
The morn, without its glory now,
Lay scattered about his knees.

And as he knelt there in the dust
Suffering their wicked blows,
He heard the mocking curses fall
From the mouths of his wicked foes.

And the birds in silence hovered,
In the nave's arch beneath the trees,
Where they mourned for the lost glory
That once was spread about his knees.

"Hey! Wrap the chains around his feet,"
Billy yelled to Larry and Shawn.
"We'll haul him to his god'am grave;
He'll wish he'd never been born."

The birds in muted requiem
Beneath the weeping willow trees
Sang for him Deep River
As he was hauled from his knees.

They chained Jimmy by his ankles
To the back of the pick-up truck,
And they dragged him for a mile
To where his bloodied body struck

A cement culvert in the road
That ripped shoulders and head apart,
Leaving his headless body toss
Like a grain sack behind a cart.

The birds above all sang for him,
Even as those curses rang,
For no one saw poor Jimmy's plight,
No angelic choir sang

As Jimmy Byrd lay in the dust,
A victim of another's hate,
Remembered only as the man
Who suffered a sadistic fate.

© Copyright William A. Cook.  All rights reserved.

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