Poetry- Honorable Mention

When you cut the wasser from the family name
insisting that you were born American,
scratched the wasser off family medals and stones,
destroyed papers to erase their origin,

enlisted in the U.S. Army for the war
against your Vaterland to end all wars,
did you think that your children
would never want to know

if our forbears had lautered beer
or purified water, if they were louder
because they lived beside a waterfall
or clearer because they lived by a spring?

Did you think your father’s homeland
could never be redeemed
and the new world would never
make the same mistakes?

You never said.
We didn’t ask.

Estella Lauter is the current Poet Laureate of Door County and a member of three writing groups. She has published three chapbooks with Finishing Line Press and has won awards from WFOP and WWA. She lives on 31 acres of woodland with her husband and does whatever she can to bring about peace and justice.