A soldier runs home
and finds his mother has turned
to iron and the pots are gone.
He finds a small note
from the mice—they took
the silver and won’t be back.
How can he return, how
can he march to war
knowing his mother may fall
from the clouds or before that
he may begin to laugh
at nothing and go on laughing
until he grows as tall
as the wayside trees.
He knows he is hungry
and alone. War will do nothing
for him. He knows
each house has gathered
its stories of dust and hurt
and waits under the sycamores
for fire to free it. He knows
it is foolish to be marching
away as long as one cloud
carries the sea back to land.
So he writes a letter
to the year and explains
how he was meant to make
something else, a ball
of earth out of his ears
or music from his wishbone
or a perfect watercolor
from the sparrow’s tears, he
was meant to grow small
and still, a window
on the world, a map
that can show him home.
He goes out to the fields
hurling it into the wind
and feels it come back, soft,
burning, heavy with rain.