My daughter Elena, age 16, wrote a poem based on Frank Meisler’s statue “The Final Parting”, here in Hamburg, Germany, where we live. I thought you might enjoy the poem. Please find it here.
Rieke Hankins.
The Bronze Girl
By Leni Hankins
I see her as she walks past, the ghostly figure.
The rain on her bronze body sculpts out tears as if she were real.
I feel it drop onto my hand and bleed through my fingers.
Swoosh! The train runs past me and I can see her,
through the bustling crowd of people.
The wind in her hair, blowing away her tears
but they keep falling.
Clutched in her little fist is the tattered teddy from her mom,
handsewn, orange stuffing pooling out the side
as if it had been stabbed like her heart.
The soft scent of her mom still clinging to it.
I can see the ones left behind too,
standing just a few feet from me.
The yellow stitching that determines their value.
Their hearts torn and tired like the dolls in their chests,
The confusion in their eyes,
they can’t tear themselves away.
Another train goes by and I see her again.
She stumbles onto her train, her teddy plummeting,
She pushes through to get it,
anything for that
Singular
Invisible connection.
Her brother pulls her back.
He knows, but his eyes match hers,
The sky mirrored, an empty blue
Abyss of sadness.
I walk past the shell of her body, her soul taken, her life stolen.
The bronze cast of her and her teddy.
I feel her tears yet I am here.
Standing where she should be,
deserved to be.
Where is she now?