Now From A Wheelchair
Looking back
over my shoulder
I see the straight cylindrical grooves in
the damp sand of the two track, each
running side by side marking
where I have been. But now, I feel
I were being hunted — hac-hh
… but I am not. I am not
being hunted.
I have been here before,
but never like this. My
brothers and I played war games
here when we were kids. Never then
so quick to imagine that I am the one
being hunted, but instead that
I am doing the hunting.
It is unfortunate that we did not also play
the strange blubbering legless fool
as well. I might have been more
prepared.
I think I have aged incredibly for not yet being 30.
I think I know things that older men
and maybe only old men think about.
In the minds of youths, it stunts something.
One part of me is already at the willow by the river,
another has not left the desert.
One part of me has come here to fish,
another is forever haunting the riverside.
One part of me sits in this wheel chair,
another is walking beside me,
as if war had never happened to him.
What did he do while
I was in another country? Did he
work in a factory or go to college?
What was his first car, what color
was it? And,
did he meet a nice
woman?
Would he be better or stronger? Would
there be a difference and would it really
matter if there was? I see the frames
on the license plates of
much older veteran's vehicles.
13 months when they were
18, 19, 20 years old. Another person
walks beside them, too. He has the same name,
the same family, the same shoe size, the eyes
are the same color, and he has the same height.
But something
about him is very different and has been
ever since. Everyday,
some part of them is still there and has defined
their entire life since then.
Doomed enterprises divide lives forever
into the then and now. I read that once
in a book about a very different kind of war.
This man who walks beside me who
stays calm and smiles when I lash out,
who thinks kindness when I
think hate, who encourages when I
abuse, what would he have remembered
of his first years as an adult, as a man?
Will I be the stronger
of the two in the end?
Probably, I suppose,
if there were such a need as
those I have been prepared for.
But I might have chosen
ignorance over strength
had I known where this would lead,
now from a wheel chair.
at least I am not alone.
