Madeline Strong-Diehl won the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize while a student at the University of Kent (U.K.). A magazine journalist and editor, she has won recognition for her plays and fiction and has poetry published in Friends Journal, News and Views, and her recently released book, Wrestling with Angels.

Vietnam War Veterans Memorial

The black marble shimmers in the sun
the wall undulates like a python.
War, you swallow people whole.
even the ones who make it home
are never the same
after looking into your eyes.

My father’s name is not there.
He came home Missing Alive.

Secret Stars

Whenever I doubt the existence of God,
I plant tomatoes.
Here in the Midwest, we are filthy rich
with first-class dirt, and the kind of
earthworms and damsel bugs
that big city people
have to order by mail.

Once planted, the yellow stars bloom secretly
in the night.  The next day, they turn into green pods—
seeds containing seeds.
The curling vines can shoot up a foot overnight.
And some break right away, unprepared
to bear their own weight.

****
God, my arms reach out to you
in all directions.
Please.  Let me not be broken
by my need to grow.

Or maybe to be broken is
to be blessed?

I cannot control the direction
of this green curling life.
Better to free myself from the stakes
I tied myself to and
just follow the light.

Finally Belonging

“We are all distortions of the spacetime continuum,”
you proclaimed at dinner that night, while our two
young children were listening.

How will they ever turn out normal?

“Could we please just talk about sex,
religion, or politics?” I asked, but no—

it was too late, you had captured our daughter Amelia’s
curiosity.  Despite all my protestations, you invited
those trouble-makers:  Einstein, Friedmann, Hubble,
Cavendish, and Gauss, to sit down and join us

or spaghetti and meatballs.

I was so relieved when they all stopped arguing long enough
to let Amelia ask you:  “So are you saying
that we change the world,
and everything around us,
with the very fact
of our existence?”

And you said:  “Exactly.”

So that means:  maybe I better pay attention.
Because every word I say or write
exerts a pull on you.  And just your presence in my life
exerts a pull on me. And I don’t know the math to figure it out,
but it seems sometimes this force between us

is very heavy.

Have I ever told you how I never felt I belonged on this earth
before I found you?  How so many times, without you here
holding me, I might have just
floated away?

In fact you are the very reason
I am writing this poem, even though you seem to be
reading it long after the fact, and far away.
You are the person in the future I am writing this to;
And I am the person you will become after you read it.
And every word you have ever spoken in love to me
has made its home in my heart,
and rooted me deeper and deeper here on earth,
where I belong.