Eleven Eleven

You left on the eleventh day, the eleventh month,

poppies keeping watch, the rails

holding their breath beneath the town.

Feisty Belgian lady tempered between two wars,

hammered and quenched until steel learned

the patience of lace, the small, stubborn

stitches along a hem.

Family legend says at seven you climbed a step in Dinant, while the sky rained iron and noise,

the Meuse slipping past like unspooled ribbon.

Doors slammed; couplers caught; the carriage shuddered. You looked back once then forward

a child becoming cargo of courage.

In 2012, in your aunt's yard before the underpass,

where absence gathers like evening shade,

the stone stood watch; there I glimpsed

the earlier you.

Your love was metal's tenderness

a grip that held, a rivet

that refused to loosen.

Now the years line up like sleepers taking weight

1914, 1940, 2012, 2017

dates laid under everything we carry.

I still hear your laugh, a spark from the forge;

your name tucked like a ticket in my pocket.

—Anne Marie Cannon