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.

***