On this episode of The Spark: Part two of our conversation with Scott Price. Scott had never wanted anything but a career in the Army. Then a back injury took his career, his marriage failed, and he lost his identity… but thanks to poetry, he’s now starting to rebuild his life.
WEB EXTRA:
Selected Poems:
The Price of Forgiveness
When my Baba calmly told my AmmiI've gone and killed your daughter
of course she cried, he later boasted. What else could she do?
She was only his wife.
She could forgive, I suppose, and she would,
but that takes time.
But only a sad, twisted little.
When my Baba calmly told my AmmiI've gone and killed your daughter
I had just clawed out of a sack, the water
and the river bottom urging what life was left to take root
on that cold bank as the river stretched before and beyond this moment,
the bullet in my head resting in a better place because I flinched
as Baba screamed of my disgrace and Taya held me still.
Three times a day others never get the chance to say what I now say
while other Babas tell other AmmisI've gone and killed your daughter
First Report
Dust so thick
you can't see the horizon.
Sun's faint glow incapable of piercing the dirt blanket, and
the harshest of winds only ruffle its edges.
Looking back on it now...it was so clearly a sign.
An anomalous start to a new Ground Hog Day should have warned us
today would be different.
What mundane, now meaningless task was I so busy with when I first heard?
What was so important to me then?
I've forgotten now.
"The first report is always wrong," we've been told over and over and over again.
But the first report is what changes things.
The gut twisting pain you carry with you,
The helplessness that holds your hands bound.
The sadness, the reality, the finality.
The first report follows the final account.
