I want to sit in that window.
The one in the room above the brewery
overlooking downtown.
It has a nice, wide ledge,
even if it’s a little short to be very comfortable.

I think it’d feel like flying up here above the lights
and picnic tables and park where there’s a wall with
all the local war veterans’ names inscribed.
My daddy and both papaws are on it,
signifying so many wars in all these generations

changing lives worldwide,
even back here in this corner of Kentucky
where I grew up saying the pledge of allegiance
every morning without really knowing what it means,
watching my daddy retreat to the car

to get away from fireworks, and
it’d be adulthood before I knew why.
Worrying I’d witness something so awful
I’d be thrown back by booms and bangs.
But here I am looking out at my hometown

knowing across the world people have witnessed
horrors far worse than I can imagine this very day,
and all I want is to sit right here in this window and
pick out shapes in the clouds building walls up
over the hills with these coming storms.