Lynn Fetterolf

AMPUTEES

They pay a dear price for dignity,
those with missing parts.
Stumps, with skin flaps sewn over
the lack of calf or thigh or foot,
astonish those who once walked free
with loping gait, surefooted.

Their walk now is hesitant and painful,
each step measured in agony.
Fitted with strange contraptions
meant to substitute for loss,
they must revert to toddler status,
relearning the simple motions
of walking; carefully placing
one foot in front of the other.

But unlike the adored toddler,
there is no one waiting with open arms
or cameras to applaud their striving.
They walk alone to the silent sound
of their extreme effort.

* * *

TRADING VOICE FOR EYES*

With thankful voice I speak to life
black words on flimsy newsrag,
prodding images of memory or imagination.
I fill the ears of those with eyes
that cannot see the pages.
Telling the day's events;
great calamities, small jests,
weather predictions, biased opinions
and obituaries.
I sing the songs of daily life
as the ancient criers
walked the cobblestones
calling the local news.
My listeners tap their way
through city streets
white-caned, informed and independent.

*Previously published in her book I Speak For Those Who Have No Voice (Nubbintown Mill Publications, 2002).

Lynn Fetterolf has been published in Writers' Digest, Prolog (F&M), Pegasus, Harrisburg Review,Beauty For Ashes, Experimental Forest, Digges' Choice, Steel Point Quarterly, Fledgling Rag, Mad Poets Review, Listening to Water (the Susquehanna Watershed Anthology), Women.Period Anthology, The Lutheran Journal, Hounds & Hunting and many other publications. She currently has five books in print.