Twenty-two
veterans a day
contrive
and execute
their
own death.
And
how many who try today
will
die tomorrow?
A
friend writes poems
about
vets who learn
to
walk again,
the
first of many thresholds
he
will cross.
Word
comes today
that
Afghan soldiers
have
retaken Kunduz.
Taliban
vow retaliation.
Overhead, U.S. jets breathe fire.
How
many will do a warrior’s dance
in
celebration of survival
while
hope and meaning
bleed
out of casually abused
and
uncounted broken bodies?
A
friend writes poetry
about
the anguish of witness,
which,
she says,
is
really the lament
of
the powerless.
She
lies awake at night
counting
the stumble of victims
and
by day writes
rambling
questions
about
why she cannot sleep.
What
about the Syrians,
slogging
through the surf,
she
asks, when they lay down
to
sleep, do they count the children
who
remain alive?
Word
comes that the court
has
ruled that guilty enough will do
and
the hangman rues the day
he
took this job,
his
shoulders slumped by so much toil.
Word
comes that the court
has
ruled that the verdict
does
not apply to officers
with
very important jobs to do
in
communities of color.
A
friend writes poetry
about
bombs exploding in his head,
then
hikes to deep and to dark
and
to where he burns
and
buries all his poems.
And
I write to him.
What
happens after
you
are done dancing alone?
And
he invites me to lie with him.
Together,
he says, we will count.
Count
what?
Yes,
exactly, count whatever.
Count
victims, he says. Count children.
Count
the wounded.
Count
the wounded women who survive.
We
should not do these things
separately,
he says. We
should not seek
the peace that
comes before the fight.
We
should witness together.
We
should speak.
