The Hard Way

I've never seen violence,
never had to raise my fists for anything but soccer,
though I can imagine—

more sweat than blood,
but the wound so opaque
with nothing to see in it.

What you don't know can devastate you,
translucent swords abroad
sharpened in your name.

I've never considered myself a violent person,
though I can imagine,
rising from my armchair in the cinema of war

to sample it, train in it,
conjure a dream to take this world
and become it, love it with pain.

Whose moment of comprehension precedes death,
besides the historians? Who knows the light
beyond blindness, except the blind?

Take, for example, any person you might know,
confidante or otherwise, and what can happen
provisionless on a long road.

What good then is a tincture of love
as gunfire flickers in the woods
like a campfire?

*

[My thanks to friends at the Litribune workshop for their thoughtful feedback]

Trash Haiku

Bottle caps scattered
down the cracked, salted sidewalk.
Rains wash these sharp, dark seeds.