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