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I Will Swim

Author: Karen Bennett
Year: Hope

His Saturday was routine

The dutiful son

Tending to his loving mother

His wife and young family

Free from worry

Unsuspecting of events to come

Plans made

Goodbyes exchanged

Never to be spoken again

Because his movements were watched

And noted

His comfortable manner

With his townsfolk abused

Infected minds

Hiding behind a wall

And a Cause

An action

So swift

So devastating

So cruel

It ripped the heart from him and us

The good

The ordinary

Our everything

Erased

Stolen

An event I couldn’t fathom

Why?

So I was left

Bereft

Adrift

Cast at sea

Floating

Life carrying me onwards only

With its predictable tides

Then, some years later

Legacy came to call

It wrapped it's net around me and plunged me

Deeper into a thick pool of despair

Filled with other desperate bodies

Too many to count

All of us packed like minnows

Waiting to be released

Back into the cool, wide ocean

It was hard to look up

But when I could

I saw a speck of light above

Not so much an angel

Perhaps a memory?

Or memories

My years with him

From an infant to a teen

His laugh

His charm

The kindness in his arms

He still keeps me warm

He helps me recall

The good souls on this earth

Reminds me that we are

All seeing life

Through the same prism

Our own truths

Reflected as a rainbow spectrum

You can see every colour

If you try

His light reminds me

I can swim

And I will remind the world of him

My children may never feel his touch

Or hear his voice

But they will know who he was

Through my touch

And through my voice

His love

Is my love

His trust

Is my trust

His hope

Is my hope

I will swim

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