I see his pick up in the yard--the grass is dead
from the heat anyway

he is nowhere to be found, except
passed out on the seat

with one of his feet touching the turf
the other still in the truck

afraid if it joins its partner on solid soil
it won't be a happy marriage

he is my child--all quarter century of him
and he won't bring in the paper

I am sure he rolled his truck on top of it...to protect me
from the news of an awful world

broad daylight, a narrow highway...
what brought you there, sans your sour nocturnal song?
a racing rabbit I couldn't see
but you could smell?

and could you tell
how close my bumper
came to you when you scampered
across the road?

you had to feel
the wind of my wake
and hear the heavy hum
my tires make

though that did not signal
a close call with death to you;
only a sound you couldn't decipher,
and a tickling of hackle hairs

how delightful to be unawares
of the fickle sickle of mortality
that could have chopped you to pieces
on a hot stretch of asphalt

when he
was a young man,
come round up,
they would hit
the trail dead dark
before daybreak;

without a morsel
of moonlight,
he would follow
the rider in front
of him, watching
the glow of the cowboy's
hand-rolled,

while
he puffed away
on a store bought
Lucky Strike, to guide
the cowboy
on his tail;

this beacon,
a bead orange  
in a sea of black,
allowed for silence
among men

who listened
for the lowing
of the beasts
they were charged
to capture, and brand
for slaughter

a flock of them we call a ******,
though not what I did to ****** men
I shot on the Mekong, who did nothing
but startle me a muggy morn  

I watched them float,
face down in primordial mire,
not far from the wire, which
split their world from mine  

birds came by noon
greedy passerines perching, pecking
on black clad backs; they sang not a word
of thanks to me

though I had made a meal of men,
for those who drop from blue skies--not even
when the flesh pulled swiftly from bone, and
blood flowed silent over their talons

July 4, 1970, Mekong Delta, Vietnam

lone falcon high in flight, what grid of ground
is magnet to your sight?

what engrams form in fine folds
hidden in your skull?

do you recall all that passes below
on a fleeting flat earth?

do you see my shovel fighting
the stubborn caliche?

to put my wife and child in dead dirt,
before you or your brethren dive

perhaps you will take pity on me, and see
you have other places to light:

the parched prairies around me,
where I pray the creator has left
you more tantalizing temptations
for your talons

so keen were his senses he could
discern differences in grains of sand,
hear gulls' calls long before others, and
recall the number of footprints
he left on his stretch of beach

yet he spoke not a word
since she passed, stolen from him
by a fever he felt from across the room,
while others had to lay hands
on her to know

the doctor would come
and go, whispering words to his father,
not realizing the boy could hear: "typhoid"
lay in his lexicon along with "suffering"
and "death"

then the priest and prayer
too late for the woman--there
for the father, son, and her ghost;
beguiling words like "comfort"
and "eternal life"

the boy did not reveal
being mute was of his volition
allowing less sentient beasts to believe
his silence was a manner to grieve
"ruse" he also knew

months did pass, and the
others implored him to speak;
he would return again and again
to his shore, where he heard
wings and winds and more

but there no creature
asked for his tongue to move;
his naked feet in the surf were enough
and when his tears wedded the waters
the sea made not a sound

I remember the innocence of childhood,
like one remembers the smell of their mothers' perfume,
I remember that, too,
easy recollections of railroad ties
and the thrill of hiding
at the bottom of a pool,
hastily replaced with the loneliness
of watching the moon rise
from the center of a midnight field,
overtaken by teenage fury,
violent and vengeful for a stolen childhood,
now adults leaving ink footprints
through the new age,
teeming with a different variety of rage,
unwavering and driven,
lamenting on what could have been

~Leaves of Ink 2017~