Sunday, June 1, 2014

5419. ABSENCE

ABSENCE
Regale me with stories of your days of leather rain;
the pounding force of dulcimer kitchens and young
men on the ground. Twisted with pain while machine
guns were still in their hands. The back-field in motion
guy we called Teddio, blown to bits by his own grenade.
-
'Absence makes the heart grow fonder.' His girl  had written
that in one of her letters to him  -  he read it all to us aloud,
mostly salacious gossip about the stupid crowd back home.
Now she'll really know. And he never will.
-
Twenty-four stitches in the top of the scalp. I never understood
if the medic meant what he said  -  that phrase seemed always
odd, but the stitches, I could feel, were in place.

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