As I write to-
                     day an a
                           poem

During the Battle of the Belgium Bulge,
a soldier from rural Kentucky, blown from his foxhole,
young, still alive, breathing foreign
air, lifeless to thought, to feelings, to loving a woman,
never would have fathered nine children had he died,
and I would not have been the second born to write.

                                    As I write to–                 
                                                  day an a                           
                                                        poem

see my words as tribute to soldiers who died or lived
and would not find the life they
lost on a typical day in their war. I am no
visionary poet. They are or were.
All of them suffered or hid their sufferings
daily. Some of the coped. Some could not.
On their days of dark and dreary
rememberings, they drank, they withdrew,
enduring, enduring any way the could.

                               After I write to-
                                                   day an a
                                                          poem,


I will go to Hilltop Cemetery
to celebrate Father’s Day
and celebrate other family sons
who fought with him–

to-
day an a
poem.