The Cairns Gave Root

The tunnel was only long enough,

For the darkness to be complete.

Cruciform, it parted to three niches.

In each, stone urns of charred flesh.

 

But on the winter solstice,

The sun pierces the cross’ cleft.

A priestess waits in the trinity,

And is born again from the light.

 

The novice, with hair of flames,

Taps the stones along the cairn.

Her music pleases the fairies,

And directs the wind back home.

 

She revolves with the wind,

White robes carrying the ash,

Torsion. Twisting copper flares,

One stone reaches out for her.

 

They burn for her, the seer.

She kneels to hear the stone.

The novice touches the spirit,

Remembers her to the living.

 

As the sun warms her skin,

She laughs. It wasn’t the moors,

Or trees, so generous with greens.

The dark and stones gave root.

Long Thoughts

The Dead
Unbury
Long
Thoughts,

Halted
By Heat,
Key Ships’
Lightening
Flashed-

 

Guns
Intrude
Staccato
Thunder-
Drums

 

Missing
Com
Pass
Ion
Killed

 

Sea
Lost
Limbs
Flagged
Pole-dyes

Stripes,
Soldiers
& Stars
Beat Blue
Scar White,
& Blood Red.

When the Men Come Home

Women gathered.
Knowledge. Nappies.
They learned
Their places
Beside bedsides,
Machines, and graves.

Women’s wealth
Wasn’t worth
Ticking cloth.
They backed
Husbands and fathers.
In the war.

Some men returned
Bandaged or broken,
Whole, or not at all.
But when men
Come home, the
Women have to.

Riveting biceps
Industrial muscles
To lift laundry,
Bolted to stoves
As sure as sheet
Metal to planes.

The same nylons,
Sewn to save lives
Men parachute
Alive, lifted aloft
Gartered the girls
On the ground.

Before the men
Came home,
The women ran,
Barren or barefoot,
Lithe or lame,
But hunter-free.

Devilwood

The sweet olive
Takes me back
To a building
Built in 1911.

With no name,
Heat, or AC,
Not enough power
For the engineers.

But language students
Don’t need electricity
To round words
Seine, saints, seins.

River, saint, breasts.
The difference is
Only fat, water,
And which floats.

Full glottal stops
Were hard won.
A parenthetical mouth
Rusts with disuse.

Before honors class
I bought coffee,
Burnt and sticky,
From the blind.

I don’t know
When it changed,
From killing time
To saving it.

The relentless need
To conquer it,
Hold it still,
Boss it around.

But it disobeys,
Turns reds grey.
It graduates with
Devilwood in May.

Missing Inaction

I. Vietnam

 

“No church today, colonel.”

Said the man who rowed

Him across the river.

 

An explosion, deafening,

Even to an Infantryman.

Clapboard, pews aflame.

 

Of 4 years of combat,

This is the only story

My grandfather told.

 

One man,

One sentence,

Saved his life.

 

He walked with God

And water buffalo,

And the Vietnamese.

 

He spoke 6 tongues.

And had many names.

Grandfather. Dad. Colonel.

 

 

II. Vietnam, Basic

 

A colonel’s 2nd deployment…

His daughters dreamed

he’d be killed in action.

 

But the colonel went,

like soldiers before him,

kissed the states goodbye.

 

He refused bad orders,

saving most of his unit,

but he was killed.

 

Grandpa in tears.

Why did I tell him?

I said I was sorry.

 

He said, “We were

in basic together.

I didn’t know.”

 

His friend had died

Half a world away,

Half a century ago.

 

 

III. Japan

 

Grandpa sent his brother

In the Navy, a note,

A 1948 Japanese yen.

 

Ripped in half. Written.

The names of six men,

As lost as the other half.

 

Officers? Operatives?

Men’s faces blur. Time.

Saki-smoke-laughter.

 

No one knows where,

Why it was sent,

or who the men were.

 

Important enough

To write, to save

for 60 years.

 

 

IV. Home

 

These men were.

Missing inaction.

Solid but never still.

 

We cannot pretend

cannot convince me

one doesn’t matter.

 

One sentence.

One man lost.

One man saved.

 

When the border is gone.

And the mission is over,

Enemies, tremors defeated,

 

It’s what they built.

Third culture kids.

Bridges and bonds.

 

I am not a soldier

It’s not my story.

But nor am I separate.