FEBRUARY’S CHILD

After that damn bastard tumor
crushed your brain, Daddy,
I could only take Honest Abe of the homely face
off our wall and hang him on mine.

Courageous to your final hour,
I could never return all the love
that you gave me.
You were the richest poor man
I ever knew, and I have tried to live
with the vision of your pain-filled
blue eyes, but it hasn’t been easy –
Like the sword smelted out of shape in a forge,
I have been hammered and banged
into a new mold and pushed toward-
“…the great task remaining…”

Daddy, you taught me to love President Lincoln,
and I, born the day before him,
found his footsteps wide to follow—
But his stern face now on my study wall,
reminds me of your history lessons—
5,500 dead lie buried at Gettysburg, and we all have a limited time…
We cannot waste it crying about our losses and broken dreams.
Bullets and tumors lie waiting around the corner
and there are no promises for tomorrow…
There isn’t even a promise of a tomorrow.

Rather that we be—
“Dedicated to the great task remaining before us…”
And it isn’t easy to let the hammering forces
bend us into a stronger cast…
You, my backwoods Hero,
and you, my flesh and blood father
insist rather – That we remember—
“Those dead shall not have died in vain…”
And my pen quivers as I push it across this present day,
not daring to tell anyone, Daddy,
that Lincoln’s grim face has relaxed of late.
Sometimes, he even smiles at me.

Ruth Wildes Schuler