Wounds

This is my weeping season. November.

There is nothing truly more stupid than war, but nothing that makes much more logical sense either (if one resigns one's self to assigning -- as I would define the term anyway -- the rationale of psychology to the interaction of states as is described by realpolitik, or power, as I do).

If nothing is stupider than war, fewer things are sadder than victims of war, or beyond that even, the media of war themselves, the soldiers. Story in the Star yesterday of an 84 year old who escaped (unlike much of his family) as a Jewish youth from Germany, was sent to England, was labelled an enemy of the state or enemy combatant or some such (as those children were) but was, despite that and his too young age, still able to talk his way into the fighting with the British -- he flew hang gliders to get behind enemy lines at D-day, for example. Bombed a few bridges. Cut off supplies to the Germans who were sluicing up the beach and those landing there.

Still, until this year he always doubted whether it (war and its hell) had been worth it. Wondered all these decades, full of doubt, until a very young Dutch boy at the reunions in The Netherlands approached him as he stood alone, thinking, handed him a flower and simply thanked the old man for freedom.

Here's a poem:

November

What if memory lacked personal boundaries?
floated free like dandelion fluff, uncorralled
by grey borders, title-less until nourished
by curious, foreign soil
(and not some odd notion of collective
memory - but
self in past-tense roaming)

Would you finally be accessible?
Dieppe concussions, rippling
along the paths of my memory
as they did down your spine
French and German and Dutch dirt
under my nails
as you scrambled to die (but didn't)
Reaching to my own face
your scar pulsing
anger and Crown Royal, shards of highball glass

And what did you know
of me?

Steven Heipel