Welcome to Poetically Yours. Poetically Yours showcases poems by northern Illinois poets. This week we feature Sarah Smith.
Smith grew up in Rockford with her grandmother, and her uncle who was a teenager at the time. This poem is about Smith’s uncle, Matthew, who died in a freak accident at 19 years old and left a gaping hole in what she calls an “already fractured family.”
It's been about 25 years since the accident. Smith says losing people is hard, and she hopes her words can help other people find sense in loss and grief.
Here’s her poem “The Passage of Time.”
I rock my infant in my chair,
soft and calm as summer air
He's newly born, has much to learn
but I have time to teach him
I watch my baby learn to fall,
he's learned to walk and learned to crawl
He's still green, but his mind is keen
and I have time to teach him
I watch my child learn to dance,
enraptured by his first romance
He's gotten big, though thin as a twig
and I'm short on time to teach him
I watch my boy learn to fight,
learn to stand for what is right
He's all grown now, and I'm so proud
but I'm out of time to teach him
I feel the pain as my son dies,
through strong and ancient family ties
He met a foe he did not know
for there was no time to teach him
- Yvonne Boose is a current corps member for Report for America, an initiative of the GroundTruth Project. It's a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms like WNIJ. You can learn more about Report for America at wnij.org.
