Two Worlds

In bed, in dread, I know
what is coming, but cannot
remember in time. WAKE
UP, I keep shouting, Helpless.

At Angels-35 we three float,
our bellies filled with 96
fused block-busters, in tandem,
30-seconds apart,

We fly slightly left and right
to stay out of back-wash, leaving
contrails, white streaks against
horizon of blue sky and bluer ocean.

Our 24 arrows speed as arced
arrows at their zenith toward
an enemy who will not see or
hear them before the carnage.

My pillow soaked, I sense the dread
but can only yell STOP. As always,
the crackling voice comes from Blue-01:
Pilot, my radar just crapped out.

Roger. Blue-02, you are now Blue Lead.
We will circle left and join formation
behind Blue-03. Roger, we are now
Blue Lead. Everyone cue on our release.

CAN’T YOU SEE IT COMING?
I begin to grow, filling the B-52, becoming
the airplane and the bombs. I dip my left
arm and circle motionless to the end.

NO, NO. YOU’RE LINING BEHIND
BLUE LEAD. THERE’S BLUE-03.
Too late. Our fate awaits. We are drawn
like huge magnets. Like lovers we embrace.

The explosion spreads for miles of sky,
propelling me from the soaked pillow
to my feet on the cold floor. I enter the black
of the middle of the night, in fear of sleep.

Tomorrow night, I will finally succumb,
dreading that fatal flight, but forgetting all
as I doze and leave Guam again, first in
formation, six flying hours to Viet Nam.

A Child Cries

As I walk down the polished vinyl squares
and pass the open door. I want to stop
and see if I can help, knowing that others
know more than I. Except empathy, perhaps.

People unseen through cracked doorways
moan or snore or sleep silently, none well.
They come or are brought because those
at home cannot heal or care for them.

I think of the collective misery emanating
from both sides of the aisle and it seems
to gather into a hell I want to run from,
sensing I may be among them soon.

So organized, on schedule with pills
and shots and catheters and bedpans,
meals on trays ignored by those who
cannot stand the smell of food.

Soldiers maimed and slung in plaster
suspended at angles, those who lie hour
after hour trying to remember what happened,
wondering where are the others.

I abort my appointment and flee.

Last of the Good Wine

At first, it was sweet with upfront
flavors still filled with sugar.
We soon found the different tastes
of different grapes, later, even
the qualities of those grown on
hillsides or valleys, some tailored
for sales of volume.

We learned to match wine and food,
usually taking too much of both.
Those who knew from years told us
secrets about aromas that lingered
on the back of the tongue, embuing
a satisfaction of getting our money's
worth and bragging rights.

We found those special bottles
and told our imbibing friends.
Soon, we would not consider
a good meal without a good wine.
There was pride in the opening
and decanting and serving.

Later, the less expensive bottles
caught our attention, giving as much
pleasure for half the price, adding
to our egos for astuteness
in knowing how to find such bargains.
We began to stock our cellars.

Eventually, the opinion of others
mattered not, and we drank according
to personal wants and needs, always
admiring the years and talents that
created these liquid arts and smugly
sipped their masterpieces.

Tinker, tailor, soldier, gardener.

Winter

Grackles swarm to rest

on bare limbs that must

wait for spring to bring

leaves and life.



A sudden launch

and a single turn

sends them south,

their stencils of flight

following predestination.



Lawns dormant under

continuous days of gray

and cold, keep those

of us who do not migrate

close to our shelters.



We tend to gather

for treats and conversation

to cheer us through

the long, drab season.



Pop the cork!

Cruel Reality

Cold wind across the eastern ridges
pushes me back from my northern
windows, sending a shiver through my chest
as real as standing on rocks exposed
by the loss of leaves along the hundreds
of miles shoved up by tectonic forces.

My life is as a tic of the eye in view
of ancient inching of masses of earth
that move gigantic rock, subject to even
greater brute inevitability. My soft being
cannot relate in time with olde events
existing without emotion or empathy.

The hills and valleys erode and redirect
in their own time, without kinship to my
admiration and artistic wonderings
at such majesty, a one-way mentalism.
Even the bare trees ignore my angles
of composition as they reach for the sky.

Future humans will find similar
images if their own conditions
are stable enough for curiosity
at things existing unknowingly.
Or my optimism is misplaced
and only the firmament will survive.

Adaptation (Just for fun)

For several days I often heard the skittering,

run-jump of a squirrel across the roof,

then silence. Curiosity led me to settle

in a chair on the top deck where I could view

the whole scene of the top of the house below.


Within minutes, the cautious creature climbed

a tree on the eastern side and started its run

to the west. From the ledge, it jumped about

five feet to a limb from a near tree, then proceeded

to fly from one limb to another, tree to tree.


My thoughts were to nip this roof-runner in the bud,

so I got my ladder and saw to lop off the squirrel’s

landing limb. I could not wait to see the varmint’s

reaction. When I next heard his nails above me,

I ran out to watch from my perch on the deck

just in time to see him reach the edge, ready to

jump. He stopped, looking all around as though

to say, “What the hell?”


After about a minute while I gloated at having

out-foxed the critter, he launched himself

to another branch a good two feet further

away than the one I had cut off. He landed

with ease and took up his usual path,

seemingly without wonder at what had happened.

Sentinel

In the half-night I sit by black windows,

seeing only tigers’ eyes of dim street lamps.


Safe and warm in my swivel chair, I wait

for pills to carry my too-active brain

and weary body back to a soft bed

filled with nothing but thoughtless time.


My fingers push keys to form words

that cannot re-create the fear of unknown

realities that overcome me when they will,

strangely, my brain not letting my brain

know what it will soon discover hidden

in aged crevices and cracks in its former

smooth walls of carefree youth.


I sip the sour wine of hope and listen

to the rumble of a train, the engineer

shattering the solid quiet with long

bursts of his air horn, as required,

but no doubt enjoying the rage of those

he wakes to join him as he flees

past the other limits of this small town.


All day the sky has been heavy

with cold gray, hiding now all

stars and planets, only faith

keeping them in their westerly swim

unseen. Surely they are there,

Cassiopeia forty-five degrees

to the north, Polaris unmoving.


My nightly Earth turns and wobbles;

stars move in the opposite direction,

firmly on course.


Quite often, one tires and flares

as it gives up its orbital effort

to streak gloriously for a moment.

 
(Yes, I know "falling stars" are not stars. ;))

Portage

Portage



Pairs of teenage boys bounce

150 pound packs, slung

between them on a pole, its

length perfect for the rhythm

that shifts the weight up

and down to average 70 pounds

or nothing for each black-clad

boy to bear.


They walk the ancient

“Old Man’s Trail,” winding

with the terrain, fixed rest stops

for rice and tea. They have

not been warned of the dangers

of bombs from planes unseen,

but they would fear their sergeant

more than any tales of danger.


Six month’s of training and culling

produced teams of hard-muscled

and mentally prepared load bearers,

intent on never shaming themselves

or their comrades without weapons.


Arms and other supplies they

haul for uncounted miles,

watching the ground and their

used tires sandals, threading

along the trail at the foot

of kharsts and across slat and rope

bridges, spans that must be

repaired almost daily.


Those that survive, return,

passing new units

that continue the march

like caterpillars along

the Ho Chi Minh Trail.


Now the survivors are old

men with white beards

and memories, wearing

the same type of black

pajamas and rubber flip-flops

on their feet. Little has changed

except there are no more bombs.


Those who flew the planes

and rained bombs on the flow

miles below, now have time

to wonder what it was all for

and tote up their guesses

of the number of casualties,

their private body count.

On Going to War

My take on Richard Lovelace’s poem, seen from the opposite view:




To Lucasta, On Going to Warres



Tell me not (Sweet) I am unkinde,

That from the Nunnerie

Of thy chaste breast, and quiet minde,

To Warre and Armes I flie.



True; a new Mistresse now I serve,

The first Foe in the Field;

And with a sterner Faith embrace

A Sword, a Horse, a Shield.



Yet this Inconstancy is such,

As thou too shalt adore;

I could not love thee (Deare) so much,

Lov'd I not Honour more.


            Richard Lovelace





To Destiny, On Not Going to War



Tell me I was not a coward

when I declared, as did Chief Joseph,

“I will fight no more, forever.”

No more bombers will I fly.



No more raining down of bombs

on humans I do not know, nor

of those I did know, torn apart.

No more pursuit of a lost cause.



Strange for one who killed

with skill, from so high, more

than a hundred missions, more

than ten thousand iron bombs.



Would you have held me in high

disdain should I have continued

to kill for career or prestige,

had I not put honor above all?


           fdharden

Retaining

A stroke of luck in hard times,
the new owner of an ancient home
wanted all stone walls repaired,
a skill possessed by few men
in the valley, one unschooled
but through his hands and history.

He began with a wonderful base
except for a few failings where runoff
water had made holes as the
ground shifted. The same old rocks still
grew from the ground, providing perfectly
weather-worn stones to fit the wall—now his wall.

The old man worked on no schedule
except one set by the task, understood
with a handshake over details of the deal.
The new owner wanted the past recovered
and the stone man knew what that meant,
having  worked these bulks and the earth for
all of his years since the Great Depression.

Two days of searching and hauling
in his wheelbarrow brought the fillers
to solidify the base. No cement, the stones
melded to leave little space for movement,
held by friction and gravity with maximum
surface contact. Perfect vertical backing checked
and rechecked as the stones took their place
to settle over the coming years.

The craftsman wore no gloves, his callused hands
relishing the heft and roughness, the feel of dirt.
Larger stones found their places in the front and bottom
as the wall grew to its former shape with the same
materials from the nearby terrain.
Stakes and strings help keep the wall even
and vertical. The stone-worker gave no thought
to pleasing the owner, but pleasing his sense of work.

Long rocks he set into the wall to help hold it together,
and heavy ones cap the level top.
He dug a drainage ditch on the uphill side and filled
it with stone rubble to carry the rain to drainage
pipes replaced after more than a century. Three months
later he stood back to assure the proper
wall width, level to the eye and pleasing.

He will watch the wall through the years as he
and his construction ages. He and the wall will
stand firm without any other choice. The owner
will also admire through the years and congratulate
himself for having found the bare hands artist
whom he knows was underpaid, not knowing
that the old man had grown rich on the job.