Glacier Polish, niche erratics! The Wallowas

WAR DEAD—a prose poem

—for Dickevicki,
Vietnam Vet, lover of poetry, and friend
on many of the happy backroads
of our Berkeley days

Imagine two flocks of white doves released like colorful balloons at a
ceremony’s end. The doves take off up into the bright morning air, but
then remain by some tragic mistake tethered to the ground. Repeatedly,
the birds fly up towards the blue skies, but then fall back just as quickly
to the earth in a sudden tug of violence. Most of the people present,
perhaps because of their own grief, because of their own great personal
loss, seem somehow unaware of this suffering of the doves. Just so, at
the end of this wall, remain two questions which the heart releases, and
which flail helplessly about in need of some resolution, some serious,
believable, answer: Where are the other names, the names we cannot
pronounce, the names that would have increased at least five-fold the
wall’s already terrible length? And will this be the last such wall, the last
such war, or shall we repeat again, and then again, the same wholly
unnecessary, brutal, mistake of making more of such wars, and of
such walls?

At the end of the wall remain two questions, questions a child might
ask, that the heart releases, and which flail about in need of some
resolution, in need of some serious, believable:—answer.

Broken Bridge Camp,
Eagle Cap Wilderness,
Oregon, X.29.2008

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