Toys in a Field

A broken machine gun
hangs as a wind chime,
rat-a-tat-tat, hugging
a willow climbed by a toddler
who keeps singing
about craters
with American eyes
that overflow. The oblast shrinks
except for the boy
dancing to a requiem
on the 6 o’clock news.
He overdubs a train escape
(the volume turned down)
to a Polish garden, calm
as distant rain.
His therapist’s other patients freeze.
Their play is silent
in the bomb shelter, elegant as
vultures landing in fields
and blanketing the dead
spread-eagled. They imitate
fighter jets thinning
in graveyards. With arms
stiff, they dream
of abandoned helicopters
coming alive like cottonwood
suspended in doorways.
Indefinite fixtures, the troops loaf,
pulling themselves through
occupation’s molasses as their
children skin the cat
stolen from the front. No stomach
for monkey bars
or dice, kids kneel in trenches,
using the gun mounts.