Only the dead have seen the end of war
Plato
Don’t ask me about my country
You must learn a generosity born of disaster and intention.
You will insist that it’s not your fault, you didn’t throw in your lot with him.
black wind desaturates our once-
colorful land. Now our homeland quakes
in gray and white images.
Soldiers again,
missiles again.
Black blood flows over our sickened land.
A squad of US soldiers on patrol
at night along a roadway in Iraq
met evidence of wartime’s gruesome toll:
a mangled corpse that gave them all a shock.
The bus driver stops to pick plums
from an abandoned late summer garden,
the pale blue carrier bags pulled from his bed
where he sleeps underneath the bus.
All night we watch movies,
drink beer in the dark, cross borders