Armies and Orchids
Armies and Orchids
(for Laurel’s brother, home from Iraq)
The little white posts
Stuck in the soil,
Markers naming the orchids
At the flower show
Mimic acres of white crosses
Sturdy and upright
Over bones ancient and fragile as
Ruby’s Dragonfly.
Orchids feed only on air,
Yet their blooms are often sacrificed,
Prey to heartless thieves, pirates
Of their ephemeral beauty–innocents,
Casualties many times over of what can be
A rich man’s pursuit. Like these
Acres and acres of
blooming white crosses,
Bedecked, celebrating holidays
With bright cheerful flags waving
Hello from those consumed
In battle, at War Meister’s Command,
Reminiscent of these prize-winning
Orchids with names like Nightfire ,
Army night goggles,
Now in the hands of the enemy.
Simple Pleasures, not Shoot or be shot
Which has a kind of lyrical cadence
All its own.
Origami Cranes suggest civilians,
Piled high at HIroshima and Nagasaki
Awaiting the attention and good luck
Of draftee gravediggers.
The Emperor’s exquisite Saffron Delicacy
Cost Japan so dearly.
Pacific fang,
Truman’s unspeakable
retort.
Babies caught in the
Tiger’s Jaw of history,
Were spat out
In its grinding wheel as
On a nearby continent
Fossils of one century
Named a blood-spattered
Specimen after Rasputin,
Sorcerer’s Kiss, and I
When my ship come in,
As one day it must,
Will name a red as deep
As pockets left by Hellfire missiles,
For Bush’s war, Soldier’s Trust.
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