When you cried I’d wipe away all of your tears
When you’d scream I’d fight away all of your fears
And I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have all of me all of me
Evanescence – My Immortal / Fallen

In the company of heroes is how I often feel
Your lives forced into a world tipsy and surreal
A struggle from the moment your first breath premiers
Clotho’s newest thread in life’s ongoing tapestry
I ignore the naysayers of your tough chances to be
I’m among the first to get to know your excellence my dears
As I engage in the daily wait of a hope and a prayer:
For quick release from the terrors that constrict your air
Trying to balance a life already in arrears
When you cried I’d wipe away all of your tears

What the world needs now is to see you fight against death
See you working towards the next small but tantalizing breath
That every morning you live to see is a cause for cheers
All the world’s a stage and you are its most promising star
And my job is behind the wings to get you that far
For the world is a tunnel vision until your sight clears
You’re just too young to know all that you go through
That I’m there holding your tiny hand smiling at you
Or if in your vexing sleep, a nightmare appears;
When you’d scream I’d fight away all of your fears

Even in the quietest moments sometimes your bodies shake
The wretched fevers your young bodies try to break
Or in the wee twilight hours how your pleas reach my ears
I’m grateful for your screams, their justice I seek
The thousand of cries are promises of a life not weak
I like to think that some small value of my Zen adheres
Though it’s a wisdom felt with absolute prudence
Thus uttered only in moments of complete silence
Though gone from me, you’ll remember in life’s jeers
I held your hand through all of these years

I hide among the simple, among the small select
Just doing a job, my soul chooses to elect
Having a temperance for each and every special baby
But the generosity of my spirit is always short-lived
When unto the new guardians of you I must give
One way or another you’re taken away from types like me
My neonatal babies that fight just to survive each day
Your headlong courage always holding such sway
As you live you won’t remember any of this I now see
But you still have all of me

<>==========<>==========<>

Just a few days ago I was listening to Evanescence’s My Immortal from their Fallen CD and the refrain reminded me of an older friend of mine who worked in a neonatal care unit.  She would occasionally speak of some of the babies that crossed her path.  Holding their tiny, trembling hands. The ones that screamed until exhaustion took them only to wake and scream again. They didn’t all reach it, but the goal was always to help them survive to the point they can survive on their own. Every now and again she would be lucky enough to see  them grow throughout their childhood years and on rare occasion to adulthood. Even though very few would ever know of her existence in their lives in those very early days.

My favored glosa form, designed to used the words of another, was the perfect vehicle for today’s prompt. This write is for her and all the countless others like her simply doing their job.

dVerse ~ Poets Pub | Meeting the Bar: Literary Allusion