What has remained where memory was lost or stolen?
Effacing years replaced what had been felt,
the child adept at stealth and isolation
becoming stranger than the life he left

behind in absence, which was both gone and forgotten.
An echo of a voice in an empty silo rings
because he heard it answer him with words
instead of bruises; the man and child grins.

Remembering selectively, the man
recalls the carcass of a red Case tractor
thigh high in grass; and Viet Nam,
a water buffalo dead in a paddy after

the Viet Cong, like willful parents, spanked
the area with small arms fire. Hell
was neither here nor there but something stank.
The mood rolled over as an odor will

disperse in time, a transient effect
of mind, but an abyss of remembrance haunts
wherever ghosts have congregated, cleft
from the wanton interval of thwarted wants.