When They Buried Us (WC)

 

(Wendy Cabell. Though piece began February 15, 2025, it evolved over time, and is being shared today April 27, Divine Mercy Sunday and feast day of Our Lady of Light (When the work is done, said the Virgin, all shall know by its more than human beauty that a greater mind and a higher art have arranged the composition and laid the colors), Our Lady of Montserrat, Saint Zita of Lucca and Blessed Maria Antonia Bandrés y Elósegui. Image is of the wonderworking Medieval Icon The Podkubenskaya Mother of God, from here, from which also: You walk through a field in the wind, in the wild, all alone, your hands are stiff, the frost penetrates your bones, and you keep thinking that She is near. She warms you up in this vast desert in the frost and in the snow… Compassion and understanding. These are rare sentiments now. She’s compassionate, which means encouragement and comfort. She comforts you only by looking at you…)

When They Buried Us*

(imagined interlude through the eyes of The Refugee by William Orpen)

They didn’t know.

When safe to return, will I want to?

To Motherland, I mean.

She didn't want me —

Yanked roots still linger in her lap.

The mountains, they’d always hugged me. 

I’d hug back. 

Arms in my lap just now, girlhood stories come to mind.

Mother Seton, Kateri Tekakwitha, countless others of their kind.

Booted for believing, they’d trek on west,

plant hymns, teach-tend, weave nests,

turn heart-soil right over —

*Based on the well known quote They tried to bury us, they didn't know we were seeds. It’s thought to be a Mexican proverb, made famous by Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenas  in the 1950’s,

in an epitaph for Adolfo Báez Bone — The actual line, written in Spanish being

They thought they buried you, but what they did was bury a seed.

Variation of this quote was also later used by Greek poet Dinos Christianopoulos in the 1970s. See here.  

**From combined prompts: Free write as inspired by “gathering words” by María Luisa Arroyo Cruzado and

“Letter” by Joseph Fasano. From Lisa Freedman's BreatheReadWrite Studio time, February 15, 2025.