Note to Myself

My boy scribbles a note,
passes it to me with a look I cannot read.
I take the crumpled paper,
scan his still-childish scrawl,
We are at War!
His body is not yet fifteen years old.
He is younger inside and cannot speak the word.
We watch the green ghosts on the screen —
Abrams, Bradley, Humvee —
race the dust clouds kicked up
by their clanking rush to attack
the child of civilization’s cradle.
I too cannot speak the word.
The spring evening is mild,
and stars are calling curtain for their ageless show.
We are tethered to the teevee —
my boy, my wife, myself —
with fixed stares like rubber-neckers
at an accident.
If it stays behind our teeth,
if we deny breath to the thought,
it will not be made real.
“Yes”, I answer, “We are.”
My cheap magic fails.
It is real, as real
as the taste of blood on the tongue
after a fist-fight.
We watch the bright boys —
the Third ID and the First Marines —
speed the path once run
by Alexander’s chariots.
I can see the A-1 tracks
fit neatly into the aged ruts
left long ago by wheels and hooves and riders.
Their bodies are now dust,
but their spirits are as alive
as a screaming newborn.
I watch him fumble with the pen,
his delicate hands and fingers
flitting like trapped doves in his lap.
Those hands bring youth to everything they touch —
guitar, model, clay, keyboard.
Now they belie both his youth and experience.
He knows the guns are aimed
in his direction,
but he is a fawn in the road
at midnight, unprepared for the coming impact.
And again I am not-yet fifteen,
feeling a draft on my neck,
hearing the echoes of lies
still three decades in my future.
Vietnamization. Hearts and Minds.
Insurgents. Peace with Honor.
Then as now,
from Thermopylae to Fallujah,
only the colors of the flags change.
I dodge that bullet —
born too late for one
too early for the next —
and grow ignorant of the secret ones.
This is luck only of time and tide and ties.
What number will he draw?
Will those dove hands cradle an M-4,
raise it to his cheek?
Will he tuck his elbows to his ribs,
exhale and focus,
before squeezing his best friend
and dropping his first human
like my rabbit in the fig orchard?
We stare at the screen —
the three of us —
amazed, like millennial fools,
that it never changes.
Wealth will not be denied.
Cain slew Abel for want of God’s love.
No violence breaches law or custom
that gains more of a chosen idol’s favor.
I watch him now,
his child-eyes intent on the shadow-play
of his future history.
I see all the bright boys
playing Army in the vacant lot.
The nascent man I once was scribbles a note,
passes it to me with a look I cannot read.
I take the crumpled paper,
scan his still-childish scrawl,
We are at War!
From “The End of an Ordinary Life”, available now in Kindle and paperback.

