Devotion, by Barbara Lydecker Crane

Reiko, Five Years Old, by Ryūsai Kishida (Japan) 1918

Devotion

I’m proud Japan supports the Allies’ fight
as war in Europe staggers on in slaughter. 
I find some peace in painting my young daughter.
Her apple cheeks here glow in late-day light; 
she’s a beacon, shining through the murk
of olive green. I bless her with a red-
orange arch like a temple overhead.
I place her hand (as in Dürer’s work
that I admire) pointing toward her heart.     
My Reiko holds a tiny, bright pink string
of Lady’s Thumb as if a sacred thing–
a common weed, but still a work of art.
It’s art to deify, not Buddha or Christ,
but all young lives the war has sacrificed.

Barbara Lydecker Crane
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Barbara Lydecker Crane, a finalist for the 2017 and the 2019 Rattle Poetry Prize, has won awards from the Maria Faust Sonnet Contest, the Helen Schaible Sonnet Contest, and others. She has published three chapbooks: Zero Gravitas (White Violet Press, 2012), Alphabetricks (Daffydowndilly Press, 2013), and BackWords Logic (Local Gems Press, 2017). Her poems have appeared in The Ekphrastic Review, First Things, Light, Lighten-Up-Online, Measure, Rattle, Think, Writer’s Almanac, and several anthologies.  She is also an artist.