The Innisfree Poetry Journal www.innisfreepoetry.org by Max Heinegg
Proving Ground
The pillow’s no shelter, my fellow soldier
rouses me with coffee’s reveille, lifts the Roman shades to show the world’s fugazi, has no pity for drivers who knife the rotary, sniped doing 40 by the deadeyed. We dread, but honor our dark alarms, march to sign agendas in authoritative ink. She pulls Lincolns from her purse’s war-chest, pins the oranges with cloves, decides the fate of our basement mouse, enlists with chicken the rustling animals hidden in our bee balm. She dubs the groundhog Shithead, I debate the purchase of a shotgun. On furlough, she fills baths with Epsom salts, coordinates the colors of red-letter days; I hand over our girl’s homework on the porch’s quay. Afternoons, our company’s one klick away. From studio windows, see our kid limber up; at the library, the young tutor turns her scope. We depend on this defense & pay for it. By day, we train the next wave, relieve each other’s watch, see damage unravel with experience that knows how battles would play out, if the field was level. Frightened, we invent pretexts to ambush competitive houses. Reinforcements are not on the way. Copyright 2006-2012 by Cook Communication |