Small soldiers run between the root-clods. Humvees roll through where iris used to be. Up and down. The rise and fall of the smallest mound of dirt. The little tanks leave a puff of smoke. Goat herds and villages electrified by ground-fire. Russia moves across your border. Turkish troops followed by Iran. They are in your tent with their paper shredder shredding rules of war. See the words torn in the smallest bits as if white petals in the window box where flowers used to be.
Too Long Before Soon
My head is full of dew— Song of Solomon 5:2
Giddy with the thought of uprising they got a fast lesson in war. It wasn’t what they thought. Displacement was a common trend, said Myrtias a Syrian student [C.P. Cavafy, “Dangerous Thoughts”] part heathen, part Christianized. The new sun falls and rises with the road that climbs a hill and then descends. The dew on fields is lit as if a distant lake was there instead of land. It all translates in different versions. A backroad journey on the open range of Texas. A war-torn map of Syria nailed to the wall. News of people sinking. How one place overruns another when a regime hits the world to oppress to maintain control.
-- Diane Glancyis professor emerita at Macalester College. Currently, she teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Carlow University in Pittsburgh. Her latest poetry books are It Was Over There by That Place(The Atlas Chapbook Series) and The Book of Bearings (Wipf & Stock). Other books published by Wipf & Stock: Mary Queen of Bees (novella), The Servitude of Love (stories) and The Collector of Bodies, Concern for Syria and the Middle East (poetry).