Before I left Iraq, I wrote this poem sitting in a bunker.
We'd already given our vehicles to the incoming unit.
I didn't even have a bullet.
That was just fine.
We gave all our stuff to the next unit,
and we're just waiting for a plane out.
So this poem is written, oddly enough, already
sort of looking back, but it was actually
written inside that bunker.
It's called "Night In Blue."
At 7,000 feet and looking back, running lights blacked out
under the wings and America waiting, a year of my life
disappears at midnight.
The sky, a deep viridian.
The house lights below, small as match
heads burned down to embers.
Has this year made me a better lover?
Will I understand something of hardship, of laws?
Will a lover sense this in my kiss or touch?
What do I know of redemption or sacrifice?
What will I have to say of the dead, that it was worth it?
That any of it made sense?
I have no words to speak of war.
I never dug the graves in Tal Afar.
I never held a mother crying in Ramadi.
I never lifted my friend's body when they carried him home.
I have only the shadows under the leaves to take with me.
The quiet of the desert.
The low fog of Balad.
Orange groves with ice forming on the rinds of fruit.
I have a woman crying in my ear late at night
when the stars go dim.
Moonlight and sand is a resonance of the dust
of bones and nothing more.