John Wayne

Like Julian of Norwich knew,
belief is something

you wear—there
but forgotten,

the khaki shoes
of my grandfather,

too tight but I keep them on,
the ancient plaid

and flannel, still pristine,
his bolo ties.

Not certainly for him
a career, simpler

more culinary, perhaps even the daily
bread and eggs

he never prayed over
or thanked

my grandmother for
or completely finished.

Homes and warehouses he built
couldn’t hold him.

His mother looking over
his bones

with the solemn gunfire behind
seemed like familiar war.

So what about clouds
now around the barn?

Wind, stench, dinner
scents all bend

in the bushes at nightfall,
and ancient aquifers

bubble into shale
beneath the lichen

and broken branches
of his apple trees.

My mother’s
father, is this you,

there, climbing in from
the reruns

to take back
your place, your workload,

your clean shirts?

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]