Sitting on his porch at one a.m.

observing distant lightning,

hearing no thunder only the

rain falling on the dark cedar

shielding his head and cool damp-

ness on an Indian summer’s night

blowing in his face and across his

asthmatic chest, his eyes fixated on

bright, piercingly so, light like lasers

entering his skull, red, silver-blue,

yellow, white, Jedi bursting beams

across what then became a battlefield

in Normandy, a flooded, rat infested

trench in a rural German field, the

crumbling, blown to bits streets of

Dresden, a mountain of sun bleached

skulls in Cambodia, some hostile, remote

mountainous region of Afghanistan

accessible only to human-less drones

controlled by someone sipping French

pressed coffee in a room near a suburb

somewhere, a dry riverbed in Iraq next to

an abandoned, shredded, armored vehicle

with only dried blood inside and shriveled

brain matter along the dusty canal to

say that humans had once been there,

alive with whole bodies and all their

fingers and toes intact, invading,

obliterating his tranquility at one a.m.

The assault came from a room a block

away between houses and under branches.

They left the room or perhaps a parent

shut off the T.V. and lights or called for

them to go to bed.  Kreisler’s “Aucassin

et Nicolette” slipped quietly through

the barely open door behind him;  their

fingers massaged his neck, working

their way around his ears, over his skull

through his hair and into his closed eyes.

His fingers met theirs; he held them close

to his chest and drifted into peace, once

more, at a little after one a.m.