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| (Image from The Denver Post) |
This Child
For the girl
sobbing fiercely
in the Pinto
turning left in
front of me,
whose mother is
screaming at her
and calling her
a fucking brat;
For this child
who thinks she
can’t fight back;
who thinks she's
earned every word;
who thinks her
mother is right;
who thinks the
fault lies with her—
let there be a Christ:
Let someone trap
her tears;
Let someone hold
her tight;
Let someone stay
her fear;
Let her know she
is alright.
-Paul Whiting
(a.k.a., Small All White in the Forest)
"I am no barrier to its sun; the light and I are as one!"
My Poetic Notes:
The reason that I wrote this poem can be summed up with the following statement: Even though the event which inspired this poem happened in the late 1980s, or early 1990s, it is still difficult for me to talk about! And this event also happened when I was just starting to express my homosexuality.
You see, I was driving to downtown Salt Lake City with the intention of looking at gay porn at an adult card shop, when this Pinto car turned left in front of me and I could see and hear a mother yelling at her daughter. (That is, I assume that the driver and passenger were mother and daughter.) And the mother was calling her daughter "a fucking brat!"
I was so moved by what I saw and heard that I turned around, headed back home, and wrote this poem. By the way, I changed the ending—and the last line used to read, "Let her be loved tonight."
Just so you know, I revised this poem, as I often do with my writing! And I changed how this poem was written when I was editing it on my "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer" and "Small All White in the Forest" blogs. So, I wanted to show you how this poem used to be written, before I revised it as above.
This Child
For the girl
sobbing fiercely
in the Pinto
turning left in
front of me,
whose mother is
screaming at her
and calling her
a fucking brat.
For this child
who thinks she
can’t fight back,
who thinks she's
earned every word,
who thinks her
mother is right,
who thinks the
fault lies with her—
let there be a Christ.
Let someone trap
her tears.
Let someone hold
her tight.
Let someone stay
her fear.
Let her know she
is alright.
Thus, I revised this poem to be written as it is above.
And this poem was also published on my "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer" blog (please see the hyperlink below for the blog), since I feel that the message in this poem applies to the message that I am trying to convey through "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer."
This poem was written in Salt Lake City, Utah.
-Paulee
https://paulwhitingwriting.blogspot.com
This "Small All White in the Forest" Post No. 030 was edited on September 7th, 2023.
"Poetry is using the fewest words possible in order to describe all that is possible to describe." –Paul Whiting [June 1st, 2022]
