Roll Call
End of
the week, time to take roll.
“Here.” I
answer, raising my hand,
not quite
as high as last time
but my
arm still to the square.
Bill is gone,
and Dick, who died
in the
eighties with only one lung.
Others
wander off and don’t return.
Gene, you
are still on the list.
You died far
away in a foreign land
and left a
wife I never met.
Your children
are somewhere
back
east, or perhaps out west.
All families
scatter. We take roll
and
listen for the voice that says
“Here, I
am.”
—Donnell
Hunter
24
March 2012
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