The Man Says Kent State Means Something Different to his Generation

If not for the field that housed early spring

snowball fights, that cradled lonely skin

with its wet grass-lick;

if not for the breeze that rocked hammock

after hammock drowsy between the trees;

if not for the dirt that dipped to the weight

of the bell; if not for the bell;

if not for the asphalt above

lined with white paint and baked from wink

of May; if not for the short-cut to class,

the feet pressing slow, then quick, then

snare-drum flicking, then wondering the sound

of blood when it fills the ears,

how young iron cools the finger,

how to load and unload a stomach—the stomach

so hollow, someone said, as the boy

dropped to the ground in the middle

of a parking space.

If not for the field as quiet as vein,

as lonesome as a petal beneath the earlobe;

if not for the lot dusted in shadow,

the smooth stones and posts of light climbing high

like corn stalks or upturned lungs;

if not for the field that still cries between pieces of wind,

then maybe this would not embody ourselves.

We walk through winter with ghosts

on our backs. We walk with bare feet, and our skin sheds

like an unlived memory. We listen when the goldfinch

beats its wings. We listen when the river

coughs up bone.

We were not there, but we are here,

digging palms into snow, leaves, daffodils,

digging so the grave is never covered, so the stench

of felled bodies is as permanent as paralysis,

everlasting as death.

We dig to remember the lives once

as young as ours. New lives that still grow

in this field as grass does, remembering

with every passing year. Each and every

passing year.