Be Safe by Laura Cherry

Be Safe

by Laura Cherry

. . . for Molly Fisk

It’s a renegade blessing,

a luckless charm, an impossible command,

a petition with one signature,

a spangled net of wishes thrown

over the precious other, an unwitting revelation:

your well-being is needed for my own.

The creek rises and the brown water bubbles.

The wildfire leaps the road to approach the houses.

Someone is shooting in the mall

or dragging women from the jogging path.

The crowd is drunk and growing angry.

From the uncertain sky, anything might fall.

Because I too am walking with disaster,

I urge my best benediction on you:

Be safe, my daughter. Be safe, friend, lover,

stranger whom I wish no harm to visit.

Be safe, fellow human, unkempt as we are.

Be safe in this world that has always

been dangerous, but which seems unbearably so

in this moment, as we part for now or ever,

as you leave me here and take your chances.

This beautiful poem was first published in River & South, Issue 1, 2018. You can read it again and check out the rest of the issue (and others) by clicking here.

This poem, which was urgent in 2018, is, unfortunately, even more necessary now. Imagine a world in which everyone shared this philosophy: "your well-being is needed for my own."

I love that this poem is a series of lists.

We begin with a list of how the speaker is addressing us. The two stanzas of this list end with the line I quoted above.

The next two stanzas are a list of the things we need safety from. These range from natural disasters to violent crime. The last line of this list works perfectly, as it can refer to both the natural and the human-made.

From the uncertain sky, anything might fall.

The speaker then acknowledges that she is also "walking with disaster," as are we all. She provides one more item that would fit the first list, a benediction.

We then move onto the last list, in which the speaker names the people she wishes safety on. It begins with daughter, continues with people close to her, and goes out from there to stranger and fellow human.

The last stanza is our good-bye from the poem, and a good-bye as the speaker addresses a fellow human standing in for all humans. We may never meet again, or ever, but the speaker wants you to be safe as you go on with your life.

This poem should have won all the awards. Which awards? you may ask. All of them. Even the Nobel Peace Prize. ;)

Three more things:

Molly Fisk is a poet.

Print this poem and stick it into your holiday cards this year.

You can buy Laura Cherry's book here. It is called Haunts and it was published by Cooper Dillon Books.