after the death (a good man,
a hat every day, office worker, father)
after the death, after the war,
a long time after
his widow finds
beneath the sheaves of snapshots,
beneath his box of ribbons and
the Japanese short sword
brought home from Iwo and rusted
with god-knows, at the bottom
of all that, a box of ears
human but no longer human,
withered
like winter apples,
smell of a long sweetening
a long time after, she asks me
what to do with them, what
to do with any of this,
what any of us
might do
__________
Blame this on Sharon. It started as a comment posted to her thoughtful blog entry.
Is it a poem? I don't know ... still a very early draft.
True story. We -- the widow and I -- connected over Carl's poems at a poetry reading.
You know, I know far too much about war. I dream about it. How did that happen?
This is stunning. I'm going to have send people over from my blog to read it.