The Sun Rose (Into the Sunset)
The sun rose.
we all stood at attention as the trucks
loaded with
my cousin,
his brother,
your friend,
rolled past at three miles an hour.
The bodies, stretched out at attention
side by side.
Five trucks worth.
I got permission to go back behind our lines,
to see if he was alive.
When we started school, we were both six years old
and the building still smelled like shoe blacking and pine,
the doors still laughed on shining hinges,
looking up into the new moon.
“How was it?”
“I couldn't feel the ground.”
He pulled out a photo of Leah.
I whistle low,
for the fiftieth time.
“Hot item right there.”
He laughs, kisses her,
slides her back into his chest pocket
left side.
Five times they charged the hill
before they were called back.
Word is they've given up
on that inflection
on my map.
I wind my trail back towards my naked hill,
ignoring the broken, crying flesh around me.
Dry, cracking tent flaps squeal up into the wind
as the old man looks down and down
from his perch on the sliver of frail light.
I am my own dream
and I will let no man shake me awake
to shrinking reality.
I walk the mile and a half,
the craters in the road forcing the trucks to a crawl.
But still,
to be alone
away from the mob,
to stumble over roots
and curse the emptiness
is welcome.
To stop and rest
on the sawed off trunk
that I sight over every night.
Up and up,
nod to the men leaning back,
hyenas in the trenches.
Nervous, fearing the night.
But the laughter does nothing
to drive the demons from our position.
I drop into the box,
the navel of our hill,
pick up my binoculars.
Scanning the jagged ground
I see a hill a mile,
maybe two,
from me,
and two men.
He slowly lifts the butt of his rifle to strike,
He cowers under an arm,
and both are embraced
in a fuming pire
and fade,
into the sunset.
Sun in Hand
Sun in hand and lift up my head
to the sky,
and see before me
scattered, the panes of Light
and pastures of grassy sand
floating, drifting apart
and swaying, swaying
to the rumbling Thunder Drums
Thrum...Thrum...Thrum...Thrum...
Crowns of flowers
wreathe the Sun's halo
as the deer bound for cover
and I lope home,
teeth bared in joy.
I slow to a pant
and let the rain catch me up
in its folds.
I can smell the palmettos burning
and know the Sun has built
His campfire
and He and Polaris and the Centaur
—His brothers—
beat the dirt into straining herds,
horses flying across the plains
and into the eye of the Moon.
Drift, fall into sleep
as the wind coos,
and the rain spells out
its abandoned tale
of when it played in the pussy-willow,
of when it was young and Mother
taught it how to feed the hungry ground.
I lie on the mat
and listen for the coyote's Wail
and answer it from the misery
that sits whittling the kindling wood
I stored away for the winter.
