Puppies

Puppies

My plane is ascending, lifting me
over this hell of a country
and delivering me to the heaven of my home.
Although everything is only relief-map size
now, I am peering through the thickness
of the window...down through wispy clouds.
Preternaturally, I view a form.
It is a crying and waving man.
No! it is the opposite of a wave...
He is beckoning and telling me
to come back.
This broken man is telling me
I can never leave...
by air...
or land...
or sea....
There are roots where his feet
should be.
The land has siezed him.
His face is mine!

Flight 211 continues to rise.
Somewhere down there are neighborhoods
shot full of holes...
holes in my friends and fellow soldiers...
holes in the Iraqis we fought beside...
holes in the insurgents.
We were all professionals,
like firemen in a blaze.
They do not want tears spilled
for them,
but I do...even the enemy.
What hurts worse are the holes made
in the old men...women...
and the children.
They were the amateurs
in this insanity.
Some of those holes were made by me.

I once held a baby containing holes...
leaking blood.
She was too young to speak...
about my daughter's age,
and if she could...
I could not understand her language.
But she communicated something
with her eyes.
She told me all the holes in Iraq
were now inside my heart...
and they could not be repaired
by surgery,
and they would not be filled in
by time.

Shaken, I went for counseling
and received only Prozac.
And, when I kneeled down to pray...
God provided no remedy.
My soul has been taken
as a permanent hostage....
Is anyone going to pay?

Those women and children
are like puppies
dodging cars on a five-lane highway.
I see this image in my nightly dreams...
and I am running with them.


Cole Eubanks

Posted over on Poets Against The War