The Common Life, The Exceptional One Poem by Dennis Ryan

Thursday, December 1,2011; Monday, March 11,2019 at 11: 15 a.m.

I share this life with my wife and sons,
share in their suffering as they do in mine.
In one sense, it's a life like any other,
an ordinary life comprised of completing tasks,
keeping appointments, holding out hope,
trying not to disappoint, not to give in.
In another it's exceptional, and I am learning
to cope with the exceptionality: I can't help
but share in the suffering of one of my sons
who he has been traumatized by police violence
so extreme that he has developed PTSD.
(The police are capable of anything because
they have no shame.) My son has been 'heroic'
though he would not say so, so I say it here
for him. In the end, I'm not sure this sharing
will make a difference, but here and now,
to testify to the fact, as a witness to trauma,
it makes all the difference in the world.