Somewhere near Whitehall

 

Somewhere near Whitehall

I saw an empty can crushed

by the side of the road next to

car-bought carrion for crows.

And a colorful sign welcoming

a carcass of a man dead to

a world in which he does not

feel he has a place to pause.

But a cross towers above it all

looking like a telephone poll

signaling the way from death to life 

somewhere near Whitehall.

***

Living with War

 

I saw the cover of Neil Young’s 

“Living with War” on a FB post

yesterday.  The letters were 

stenciled black on a paper sack.

I bought my copy at the BX on

COB Speicher in 2006 just out-

side of Tikrit, Iraq where I was

deployed as a medical officer.

I was a reluctant participant in

an unjustified war seemingly

created out of whole cloth by

the Vice President of the USA.

When I returned from the war

my two year old son took a

liking to the music that this

strange man had brought.

He would dance defiantly

to its driving beats, feeling it

as a child is prone to do in the

immediacy of their experience.

I was living with war but dying

to see my son too long

separated by the artifice of

one man’s maladjusted ego.

***

God’s Garden

 

My four year old daughter asked

if I would listen to her heart and 

so I flattened my large ear to 

her chest and listened to it beat.

She then asked if she could hear mine 

and placed her small ear on my chest.

She observed it was “slow” and then 

shared something that shook me,

“Maybe God is digging up his yard to plant a garden.”

It was as if Keats himself had 

materialized in her mini-mind

and gave a little push to create 

something bordering on pure poetry.

***