Beyond the Potomac
Beyond The Potomac
by Susan T. Moss
Lincoln sits in stony
silence
with
sleepless gaze while American
soldiers
shrouded in ponchos and helmets
stride
the Korean monument
near
a black wall sanctifying
thousands
who might have wondered
had
they lived past Vietnam
what
message this dark testament
could
offer those remembered
in
a registry at the
laurel-crowned
spectacle
for
the bloodied honor of World War II.
And
this spring a hawk swiped a sparrow
and
last night a coyote got the Wilsons’
dog.
Destruction
flies on fragile wings
or
stalks with hungry defiance
through
our neighborhoods and lives
as
we wonder what fear looks like and
how
to measure it in a form easy to grasp
when
carnage howls at our doorstep.
~
first published in Out of Line
