Veterans Day


The old war has gone all threadbare.  
Ruined fighter planes sit in fields,
visited by crows who are all cousins,
and mourn nothing.  They recognize
your face as you walk your fat little dog
down the long gravel path leading
from an earlier life and feeding somehow
into tomorrow—no one knows how.
It was a dark, dark time, you may say
as if to someone long gone, or to God,
who needs no reminding, or to great-
grandkids, who bob their heads as if
in vigorous agreement, but really
just listening hard to their own music.
You did the same in your time.  You
would probably put on your uniform
if it still fit, and if you could locate
the garbage can where you hurled it
in absolute fury, along with pay stubs
and a deck of mildewed cards.  You
hardly remember why you were so
angry all the time back then, but
a certain way the wind screams in trees
during storm can bring it all back,
fighter planes in the air where they
belong, and all the crows hunched over
on their branches until the rain stops.





Passing The Torch 


January 1961:  our yard unbroken snow, 
spruces and maples black and white 
as those sun-smeared images on our flickery set 
where some drained grandfather my parents pointed out 
was called Ike in tones of such reverence 
that I too marvelled at the spectacle: 
a general passing command to some lieutenant 
my folks' age.  They hadn't voted for him. 

I've no memory of the famous we-can-do-it speech, 
nor of the great snow-haired poet struggling 
to rescue his poem from the windy glare 
—just that stiff old West Pointer, grim and colorless 
in the snowy field of our brand new Zenith. 

Within a year my brother and I played PT-109 
in the swimming pool, barking commands in phony 
Hyannisport accents.  Ike must have dawdled along 
playing his eighteen rounds just out of range.  Within 
the decade we were sweating out our lottery numbers, 
signing petitions against napalm and secret bombings. 
JFK's face had flattened to fit on a half dollar--
and Ike?  The general was documentary footage by then, 
duller than crop reports on our now-outmoded set. 

Mom and Dad still found themselves pointing at the screen— 
Kent State and My Lai, Cambodia and Pentagon Papers— 
with veteran rage.  My mother promised to squeeze back 
into her sergeant's uniform and show up in my place 
if it came to that.  I never doubted that she would. 

I don't doubt it now.  Older today than my parents 
were then, that chilly winter afternoon, 
and having sent a few students in my time 
off to their own action, why do I daydream uselessly 
about taking their places?—both old soldiers 
and young, all headed the one place where soldiers go. 
Why do I find I cannot honor them all at last without 
blessing their wars?  I turn back through that icebright sun— 
where no one's delivering orations anymore.  Where they're
just standing on the platform as if at attention, as if forever. 



​

Veterans


My first veteran friend, Mel, 
trudged Worcester's icy streets
practicing his scat and jive, 

chanting his poems 
to the jaundiced streetlights.
He arrived chattering and thirsty 

at the radio station where 
we aired weekly.  We read Whitman, 
we read each other, we interviewed 

the worthy unpublished.  We bored 
the skin off the engineer, 
a cave-dwelling radio creep 

whose taste ran more to free jazz 
than free verse.  During pledge drive, 
we raised zero dollars.

Later, at Mel's place, it was all 
Hendrix on his bargain guitar, 
though Mel played worse 

than I listened.  First Vietnam vet 
I knew, he had the knack 
of putting a mean spin 

on nothing much:  Quang Tri, 
he'd sigh, popping a fresh can.  Solid 
bluesman:  Quang Fucking Tri, man.

He was stretching college as far 
as possible.  I was avoiding grad school.
He'd scribble poems all over 

his algebra notebooks, and jam 
in his back room with his vet pals. 
Jim on bass, and on drums, Doherty:

an ex-con with a lot of tattoos
and nothing to say.  I'm an alcoholic, 
he declared the first time

I passed him a beer, so I froze 
giddily grinning.  First time for that, too.
I drank his and mine all night, 

while Doherty just wailed away 
on Purple Haze, paying me no mind.  
After a while I grew less edgy 

with that crew, noticed more 
their dreadful chops and five-song 
repertoire.  Need I say those were stoked 

and ready times?  We were shady dudes,
we were film noir.  A few rounds
into the evening, Mel and I 

would scream Lorca over the feedback,
we would perform call-and-response 
Dylan Thomas for the tape recorder.

Mel called him "Thow-Mass," though, 
and I never asked if was error 
or irony.  I'd learned that much, despite 

my draft lottery luck, my lily white degree 
he never had a chance at.  Still, I noticed.  
The night after I told him 

I was leaving town for more school, 
Mel phoned at midnight, 
drunk as Dylan himself, and said 

Man, I'm just gonna miss you, 
that's all, about forty times, 
until either he passed out or I hung up, 

or both—and that was the last I heard from Mel.
Where he is now I have no right 
to guess, but he was a sly and clever coot,

when sober, so if he got that
commuter school diploma and levered himself 
out of his stale triple decker world, 

I can't say I'd be astonished.  
If he hasn't touched Lorca
in twenty years, I couldn't blame him.  

I'll just tip my hat to that 
Voodoo Chile  soul I once glimpsed 
for an easy season.  I see him 

hustling his way down the winter hillsides 
of another life, singing loud and bad, 
taking evasive action all the way.