He sat on my stoop, slightly drunk as usual, with his head against my door.

He swayed a bit as I helped him inside and asked me for a drink.

I gave him water, fed him a meal, and listened like I always did.

He told me the stories he could not escape,

The stories that drove him to walk the night,

The stories that put him there with his gun.

The war, some covert machination for unknown gain,

Where he killed for reasons he was never told,

Continued to claim him as a casualty.

He did not kill himself that night,

Though he fired one shot in his liquored haze.

Perhaps he knew it did not matter,

Because he had not returned alive at all.

No war is just, for any cause, if this is what results.

I hold the brass casing in my hand and mourn.

It was almost dark, and I was alone.

The moon waited to rise, sunken in the swampy waters just beyond.

It would be bigger than the sun, orange-red,

But send no fiery heat to blister the tarmac.

I wanted to stop on the edge of the gravel road,

To watch this happen, but had no time.

My skin throbbed as I walked, and I wondered

What would happen if I raised my head in supplication.

Would the night heal what the day had wounded?

I wanted to stop but had no time.

I still remember the crunch and slide of the gravel underneath my feet,

The whirr and click of crickets, and the weight of the damp dusk

As it fell, far too heavy and far too fast, upon my hurrying back.

Eight years old, alone.

I wanted to stop but had no time.

cold dropped my wandering mind

immediately into the heat of body’s center,

wind slammed my absent attention

into the here and now of walking,

clouds forecast my changed trajectory into a quieter day.

I cannot call you as before,

to register this dramatic landscape.

frozen tears are no different than ice;

sorrow chills the heart in mid-beat.

another death, and snow is falling.

another day, and you are gone beyond.