The Veteran

Beside the barn a huge stack
of logs cut and split with imperfect 
symmetry and Howard his
bald head like a bullet is
in his undershirt 

                       Marine tattoos 
on his bulging biceps and I 
remember things he’s told me 
about the Nam and the drugs 
and living on the street and finally

Meeting Suzanne who loved him 
whole again. They moved here
to raise horses which healed him 
until Suzanne passed from cancer
and he wept in my arms like a baby
and started drinking again 

*

Invasive Species

Howard says back up your truck 
we’ll load er up      
Ash? I ask 
having seen the stumps
beside the road    
Yeah he says 
You know it’s against the law
to haul firewood cross 
county lines don’t you but
it don’t matter no more 
with ash wood
They’re all dead now anyways 

Emerald ash borers 
Howard says
they come from Asia about 
thirty years ago and now
they pretty much killed every ash
in the east a shame he says

I offer to pay him for the firewood
but he ignores me and we load
half a ton in the back of my truck
and stand there a minute or two
resting and I think 

They must have looked  
like old men, the ash trees
dry and gray and brittle 
death spreading from one tree 
to another down the road

*

Abandoned Tractor

Howard is looking at his forty
acre spread where he grew
corn and soy and horses 
It’s mostly scrub now

He kept the mule
that reminds him of him
And a few of the horses  
too old to sell

He hasn’t the heart 
to kill them

The soil he and Suzanne worked
is fallow, choked
with weeds and the smell
of failure 

*

Gasoline

Old warriors rarely 
say anything about 
people they killed or
horrors they saw instead
they talk about the fun stuff
of war the killer weed and 
the mama-san they spent 
a weekend with 

                               Or maybe
the strange feeling of stepping
off the plane in Dulles
having misplaced their lives 
and now living someone else’s

Once when he was drinking
Howard told me how he watched 
seventeen Vietnamese children
mistakenly machine gunned 

By our own choppers and Howard
and his buddies were ordered
to pile the bodies
pour gasoline over them 
and light them on fire 

And I thought Holy Jesus
these men we send to do 
unspeakable crimes 
in our name

Bury that shit real deep 
where no one can ever find it