This is a poem I wrote nearly 30 years ago, to commemorate the great love of Saint Maximilian Kolbe. He offered his own life in exchange for another prisoner in a reprisal execution in Auschwitz, and died in the "starvation bunker" on August 14, 1941.
August 14th
I am the guardian
unworthy
of the flesh and blood that I command.
I stand
extended
from world's edge to windowless walls,
the quarry-block place markers
around my becoming-all-things.
I am a mother's graceful, sweet breath
dissolving
like fine, penetrating mist
against your broken, burned skin.
I am the witness
stepping out of place
away
beyond the trembling assembly
of bony finger-clutched this-moment,
toward the timeless returning unto dust of you
and you
and you.
Forward!
step forward...
...out of place
for I am
your sacrifice.
—August 14, 1989
