We Were All Odysseus in Those Days

A young man learns to shoot
& dies in the mud
an ocean away from home,
a rifle in his fingers
& the sky dripping
from his heart. Next to him
a friend watches
his final breath slip
ragged into the ditch,
a thing the friend will carry
back to America—
wound, souvenir,
backstory. He’ll teach 
literature to young people
for 40 years. He’ll coach
his daughters’ softball teams. 
Root for Red Wings
& Lions & Tigers. Dance
well. Love generously. 
He’ll be quick with a joke
& firm with handshakes.
He’ll rarely talk
about the war. If asked
he’ll tell you instead
his favorite story:
Odysseus escaping
from the Cyclops
with a bad pun & good wine
& a sharp stick.
It’s about buying time
& making do, he’ll say. 
It’s about doing what it takes 
to get home, & you see 
he has been talking 
about the war all along.
We all want the same thing
from this world:
Call me nobody. Let me live.

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My Father on His Shield

Shiny as wax, the cracked veneer Scotch-taped 
and brittle.  I can't bring my father back. 
Legs crossed, he sits there brash 

with a private's stripe, a world away 
from the war they would ship him to 
within days.  Cannons flank his face 

and banners above him like the flag 
my mother kept on the mantel, folded tight, 
white stars sharp-pointed on a field of blue. 

I remember his fists, the iron he pounded, 
five-pound hammer ringing steel, 
the frame he made for a sled that winter 

before the war.  I remember the rope in his fist 
around my chest, his other fist 
shoving the snow, and downhill we dived, 

his boots by my boots on the tongue, 
pines whishing by, ice in my eyes, blinking 
and squealing.  I remember the troop train, 

steam billowing like a smoke screen. 
I remember wrecking the sled weeks later 
and pounding to beat the iron flat, 

but it stayed there bent 
and stacked in the barn by the anvil, 
and I can't bring him back.