Judge’s Choice for Best Creative Writing in the Staff, Family,
and Community Category
© Anthony Sedun
Son of Yvonne Sedun, RN, Pain Clinic, Retired
The deer climb the steep hill in the forest and emerge daily
toward late afternoon and dusk, crossing almost casually
the field downhill from our house.
Zach and I assembled the kids’ playset months ago
in the cool dusk, as the stars burned brightly above and
the deer gathered in the field to forage and watch.
Powder-coated steel, hex bolts, foot caps, button
head screws, and swing bars. No more manuals;
just memory and drive to finish midst the dark.
You know these things, though—at least, you did.
But the days are like our kids, ever a-whir, with enough
kinetic commotion, crests and troughs, epiphanies and crises
to command the fullest attention of patron saints
and mothers all the same.
At a time when many question nearly everything,
I question not; I question less. At least, not like they do.
It takes an oak of will to keep scrutiny from souring
into cynicism, to stay the harvest of the black cherry tree.
More than questions these days, I hold hope close.
Rooted in faith for what has been and what yet will be,
my hope is like my father years ago, sitting in front
of the coal stove in the dark basement, tending the fire there
with the deft, gloved hand of a physician. Watching.
Watching. Acting.
Acting.
In small movements,
to sustain the life therein.
It is said that the earliest human burials occurred 100,000 years ago.
Red ochre-stained bones, a wild boar mandible held fast
to the arms of the dead, and seashells a-strewn in the caves of Qafzeh.
In the next millennium or more, what will be left of this?
The black cherry, alone among the oaks and Eastern hemlocks in the backyard,
will have fallen down the slope toward the run in a fraction
of the future years. How many generations of deer will walk
the same paths from the forest’s edge across the field by then?
Yet, our lives—Quixotic, at times, delightful, in turns—along
with the life of everything that lives and that breathes,
will have mattered, even in the quiet turns
of history’s hands—hands that serve the Mover of rocks,
the Maker of men, the Mystery of life held at times
so close that the newborn cannot see its mother’s face.
May you know now what you have always known:
the gift is all around us, emerging almost casually
from the forest’s edge, ambling toward a field
as the fiery coals of each day’s last light fall
through the grates with gravity and grace.
Judge’s Comments:
This tender, clear-eyed message takes us from a family backyard to the caves at Qafzeh and back again. In the process, it reminds us of the indispensable nature of remembrance and wonder.