With the smell of firebombing still in his nose, he brings our plates to the table pausing for a vertiginous instant, holding them as though they are two stones. When he tries to smile his face turns purple like sky above that Red River delta. He once stood against a tree with both arms above his head, like somebody about to dance flamenco, but he wasn't, it was the time of the Spring Offensive, and he was looking into the barrel of a rifle held by a boy whose trigger finger had turned to stone. Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA 98368-0271, www.cc.press.org | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A GUY I KNOW ON 47TH AND COTTAGE by CLARENCE MAJOR JOAN OF ARC IN RHEIMS by FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS EPITAPHS OF THE WAR, 1914-18: THE BEGINNER by RUDYARD KIPLING CHILDHOOD by JENS IMMANUEL BAGGESEN PSALM 121 by OLD TESTAMENT BIBLE |