The train is moving
faster now.
The women from Czechoslovakia are stained into our memory.
Their smell hanging in the air.
It is the scent of courage.
They fed our bodies,
but their willingness to risk
fed our souls.
They did not see wolves that could do them harm.
They saw what the wolves thought they had concealed.
There was something about their eyes that reminded
me of my mother.
I saw love.
Not because we were their sons or husbands or fathers
but just because we were.
We mattered.