Embedded

Sticking to my chair in the camp’s tiny welfare room,

shoulder to shoulder with troops surfing the net or calling home,

I read the online paper, greedy for news – another point of view

to show me something of this place from the outside looking in.

What I read is disappointing, leaves me cold, diffused.

An article about a Pakistani journalist

giving interviews to the Taliban,

sipping tea for a story, watching ambushes unfold.

It only takes a moment for me to run my thoughts

like a skewer through the back of every armoured carrier

that’s seen its hull cracked, its seats torn apart, witness marks

left in dark red on the ceiling. This was someone’s heart.

If I had a picture, I could point to the facts.

They were here and here and here, when they landed –

those soldiers that got caught in that IED attack,

flung hard, like something coming off the top

of a violent spin cycle.

And here is where the armour on their carrier gave out.

And here are their water bottles and ration packs

and foil wrappers and bits of burnt kit strewn about.

And here is the shit culvert that they didn’t spot –

the little pile of rocks disguising jerry cans and command wires

that lead back through the grapevines.

And farther up on the ridgeline overlooking all this

the Pakistani journalist and his Taliban hosts

would have stood, watching a Canadian convoy

approach in the distance, raising dust clouds a mile long.