Monday, October 02, 2006

One of the Poets

Here is an excerpt from one
of Brian Turner's poems. He read his work on Saturday
at the Poetry Festival ( a poem in which he remembered
someone his commanding officer decided should not be
remembered ) and I met him later that night in the rain
waiting on line for coffee, we shared an umbrella and
talked for about our fathers. I am hoping he won't sue
me for posting some of his work here.

...she sees the shadows of people working
to save her, but she cannot feel their hands,
and she cannot hear them any longer,
and when she closes her eyes
the most beautiful colors rise in darkness,
tangerine washing into Russian blue,
with the droning engine humming on
in a dragonfly’s wings, the island palms
painting the sky an impossible hue
with their thick brushes dripping in green…
But this is all an act of the imagination,
a means of dealing with the obscenity
of war, what loss there is, the inconsolable
grief, the fact that Thalia Fields is gone,
long gone, about as far from Mississippi
as she can get, 10,000 feet above Iraq
with a blanket draped over her body
and an exhausted surgeon in tears,
his bloodied hands on her chest, his head
sunk down, the nurse guiding him
to a nearby seat and holding him as he cries,

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