Helicopter overhead banking screeching
power-pumping the air, but I’m here
in Massachusetts far away from Baghdad
so I suppose I’m safe at least
for the time being. It’s only
an impressive sight to see such power
overhead, nothing more nothing less.
As a baby-boomer who never did
a tour of Vietnam, I don’t have much
of a clue about what real danger is, no
burning oil fields, no idiots shooting guns
in the air, flailing themselves with straps
and chains, no republican guards and
military ops, no weapons of mass
destruction, no big old Sherman Tanks
crushing streets and sidewalks, no,
nothing, no blown-up buildings with loose
ends and dangling wires hanging
everywhere. Just me and the dog
walking in the woods, contemplating
a big old helicopter flying overhead.
One of the families in town,
(we didn’t know them)
recently moved out to California.
And we just heard that
they are all dead.
The rumor is that the father,
a normal middle-class, white-collar,
dim-wit like me, killed
his two teenage kids, then
his wife, then finally himself.
It was out in the desert someplace.
But people aren’t sure yet
if he used poison or a knife or a gun.
I wonder if my grandfathers – Fred
in the Navy, Will in the Army –
ever thought for one moment way back
in 1917 that the war they were in,
World War I, the war to end all wars,
really was. Were they naïve
or simply hopeful that there
would be an end to the horrific
bloodshed and destruction that has
plagued mankind from the beginning.
Perhaps in 1942 as the US wadded
reluctantly into World War II my
grandfathers leaned back in their favorite
chairs, puffed their cigarettes and said,
“OK, this one has got to be it,”
or then again maybe they didn’t.
