by Roger Reeves
Haiku
-after RaMell Ross
Too in love with the debris of war—
Spear tilted against a tree, helmet gashed—
I could not see them, at first, in the road—
Three men draped in spring and black pollen
Pointing at each other, accusing one
Another of nothing but being there
Without war or spear of grass tipped
In acrimony. The three men stood in the road
Like the hoof and heel of horse and rider
Hemmed by the river’s lick, and the river,
For once, without blood or the musky dead
Bleeding in it, hurrying the rider
To hurry the horse to hammer the high
Grass and heather on its shore into the bowing
Shape of a widow humped over in the high
Grass of mourning. The men stood in the road
With the candor of a wound no longer
Asked to speak, sigh, or sorrow therefore
No longer a wound; no longer bowing
To language or the hard-headed weather,
The men, in their silence, are a pillar of fire
Lifted from its cage and shattering into ink,
Where the lights have gone out, and the day
Becomes the black paper it was always
Meant to be and crumpled around my eye
So I see not just the knuck and buck
Of the nocturne but where the shadows cling
To stone and pollen and the road
Which is where the dead gather to touch us
If we might get beyond our love
Of sorrow.
