For Connie, a Friend Indeed

There are no pictures of poker-playing dogs!
The health certificates make for dull reading
And last month’s issue of Texas Monthly
Has not the old cache’ of Field and Stream

There are no pictures of poker-playing dogs!
Among the snaps of Baby’s First Haircut
Children and grandchildren in cute little frames
And lovely young girls all styled for the prom

There are flowers and scents and catalogues

But –

There are no pictures of poker-playing dogs!

                                                          ­ Woof!

1.

Stuffed men who never made a single day
Of training make brave speeches on this day

Surely each one of them has his reward -

A government SUV
And bodyguards
And a household staff
And a clean, dry place to sleep
And an income
And medical care
And a pension
And a book deal
And a library
And maybe an eternal flame

2.

And the nation’s enlisted daughters and sons
Who sweat among the rocks, not on the golf course

Have their reward from a grateful nation -

Taking cover behind a blown-up Hummer
They are the bodyguards
They dig holes in the rocks and sand
MREs contracted by the lowest brother-in-law bidder
They stand-to all night under fire
They are paid something less than the president’s special, um, assistant
They will be ignored by the DVA
Their eternal flame is the memory of a death-burnt friend
They are dismissed as millennials and snowflakes
          By the Keyboard Kommandos who learned about war
          Just like our stuffed men in Washington
          By watching Patton over and over

The stuffed men bray every hollow cliché,
But this is what the stuffed men really say:

“Thank you for your service; now shut up and go away
Until we want another photo-op on Remembrance Day”

Some prophets spoke before the thrones of kings
And others at the gates of Jerusalem
One stood upon a rock and split the sea
And others heard God in the soft, soft wind

A prophet of our time at a table stood
Before a cafeteria table draped in cloth
Fronted a trinity of microphones
And split complacency that rainy day

Umbrellas were dripping, the sky was low
A prophet spoke to us, and we did not know

A woman. A knife. A very sharp knife.
She has waited for this hour, this moment
Her eyes – they gleam with passion dark upon
A figure recumbent upon a slab

She is not alone; she is being watched
But no one will dare cry for her to stop
They have all made their agreement, their bond
And now the woman lifts the knife…she strikes…!

She has cut the heart from an artichoke
And the studio audience applauds

Canada Day?  Just One?

With love from an ‘umble Yank

But every day is Canada Day!

The afternoon plane lands in Halifax
When the hatch is popped, cool air rushes in
Even the fog is happy in Canada

The Muskogee 1 never made landfall here
And so we pilgrimage for her, completing
Her voyage from ’42 to Canada

Wolfville, Grand Pre’, Le Grande Derangement
The Deportation Cross and beer cans
Well, God forgive the Redcoats anyway

Newfoundland
Is a bold
Anapest

The church spires in a line, the light is green
The bold young captain shoots the narrows wild
Can you find your way to your painted house?

To walk again the cobbles of Ferryland
And smell the very blue of the Atlantic
The sea-blown wind is cold in Canada

Blue Puttees and a mourning Caribou
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord
Good children sing “We love thee, Newfoundland”

Quebec – royal city of New France
May Le Bon Dieu bless the Plains of Abraham,
And may God bless
The signs an English driver cannot read

The Coca-Cola streets of Niagara Falls
Yanks laugh at made-in-China Mountie mugs
And buy them, happy to be in Canada

A cup of Toujours Frais from – well, that place
But to us in your southern provinces
Below Niagara, Tim too is Canada

Though Canada goes on, these scribbles must not –

Your grateful guest wishes only to say
That every happy day is Canada Day!

She is a 10,000-year-old girl
Although she is rather younger today
Only 240 or so
While taking coffee with James Madison

She has discussed the weather with Gilgamesh
Given Keats her handkerchief for his cough
Danced with the fairies on Midsummer Eve
And captured the castle with Cassandra

Because she has listened when the Nine have sung
An old soul she is, and so
                                                         forever young

In the end, they had to break into his room
He was dead in his chair, and quite alone
Self-exiled from his family for years
Alone in a shell, silent, and alone

The accidentals of life were cast away:
A coffee ***, a coat over a door
His schedule for the methadone clinic
A note to meet with his parole officer

But the pathology tox screen was clean -
Better than most of us, he went down fighting