My little brother says he’s worried about me.
Asks why I left my wife. We get cut off
and he calls back, says the bottoms
of his feet are finally healing up, he’s back
on base, packing on muscle. Four nights
in the brackish swamps of south Georgia,
hunger-sick, stumbling, and each time one
of his squad lay prone to consult the wilted map,
he’d have to kick them awake. Roots, he says.
Get one jammed in your ribs and the ache
will keep you up. I tell him I found a studio
in Oakland, full-size stove, eucalyptuses
leaning prehistoric in the hills. That I climbed
one morning up under the overpass on Forest,
a little drunk, and pressed my palm to the cool
underside to feel the traffic rushing over.
I was pissing brown, he says. I knew if I quit
they’d give me a gallon of water, let me crash
in the jeep. But I also knew the worst of it
was done. The third night, orbs of red light
circled the cottonwood trunks. The fourth,
he spotted his first girlfriend fifty, a hundred
yards ahead. She turned slowly to face him,
then bent down to hover a pale hand
above the water. It happened over and over.
She’d bend and he’d drop his rucksack and sprint
into a clearing soaked in half-light and steam,
and see her again, turning, farther off.