for Mike, US Army SP4
There was no horizon, only freight trains
and bean fields, low clouds that I’d squint
into mountains or oceans. Slow glower
of those boondocks, broken sidewalks
and fallow streets, the factory
setting our clocks.
And pale yellow tablets taking my ink—
dumb tracery of what I couldn’t yet see.
Long division and proofs, the attic breath
of my books. Their pressed words my
calendar, my compass, at eighteen.
But then my number
came up. Vietnam was burnt foliage and
fracture, bright birds I had no names for,
dank smoke we couldn’t exhale. All
those still bodies floating facedown
downstream, husks of belief.
My hand unsteadied,
so they sent me back home to Ohio where
I squared a circle in my grandmother’s
woods. Built a cabin, laid in a garden.
Sycamores standing sentry as I read,
worked my sums. Dream’s long net
dragging the river.
Psalms in the leaves a slow surround, Lord.
I have been cut off from the sight of your eyes.
But what lies in wait in the years you allot?
I miss the bite of the fall’s first green apples,
how our road parted the summer fields, a seam
between the same.