A WAR STORY (POEM)

                         A War Story

         

                               by Dean Metcalf

I.

We came from naked Indians

walking into a red sun

to naked cowboys

shivering under a blue sun.

II.

Here's how it started:

A boy, I ran the rabbit trails of

              southern Oregon,

hand‑whittled sapling spear‑shaft

        cradled lightly at the balance:                                       

shaft notched for fire‑hardened

                 wood point

(hand‑whittled too from orange crate slat),

point lashed in place with

                 leather bootlace.

Feathers and amulets!

I touched artifacts of manly power

so old their age was told

by the half‑life of the carbon in them,

and something in my blood

was already akin to the flint

         of the arrowheads

my little‑boy's hands

wiped dust from.

I sneaked across the housing project lawn

with homemade bow

and one precious storebought arrow

and shot a robin in the ass.

The robin wobbled, tried to run,

dragged the arrow, screaming

like any being,

shot.

III.

The afternoon of my childhood

I went to war.

The manchildren of our side and the manchildren of their side

hammered our ammo into words

of smoking brass

and copperjacketed lead

and we talked about death.

Here's what we said:

     ‑They told us you were different

      when they sent us here:

      they spoke of your animal eyes

      and your strangely foul body odors.

        ‑ah! They told us the same

         about you. But last night

         when we were killing each other,

         grunting in the mud

         bayonet and hatchet lunging

         steel cutting steel

         parried blades wanting bone

         we came up locked,

         straining,

         arm to arm

         face to face

         and I saw your eyes.

         Sure, they were animal:

         they reflected mine.

     ‑Yes. I saw it.

      And your smell was strangely foul,

      as they said, but no different

      from mine. That second set of sweat‑glands

      that fear engages

      secrete some smelly stuff.

        ‑Yeah, fear is democratic.

         It has us smell alike

         and feel alike

         and diminishes our differences.

         All warriors still alive

         know this.

     ‑That is why we have more in common

      with you, our enemies,

      than with the leaders who sent us here.

        ‑It's the nearness of death

         that does it.

         Death is the greatest teacher.

         Getting close enough to feel

               death's chill breath

         teaches us that life's worth more

         than all the flags and anthems

         we keep trading it for.  

      ‑Death gives power, too:

      death is a wall

      you can put your back against

      and push, moving heavy things.

        ‑The problem is that death's teaching

         and death's power in life

         come only when death is close:

         when death makes us all the same.

     ‑Those dead ‑ yours and ours commingled

      atop that rockpile

      since last week's fight ‑

      they look all the same.

        ‑Yup. Once the sun and flies

         have been at it awhile,

         you can't tell a dead black man

         from a dead brown man

         from a dead white man

         from a dead yellow man.

     ‑Dead children are different, though:

      smaller.  

(Chorus of warriors from their side and our side):

"DEATH MAKES US ALL THE SAME."

IV.

And death is close.

The new artifacts of manly power

have a less friendly half‑life

than the carbon 14 of arrows and spears

and the death they own

makes us all the same.

Years after the combat,

I stood, in dream, on a wide plain.

Many arrows came out of the sky,

singly,

each perfectly aimed

at my heart.

I dodged each so narrowly

that the feathers brushed my side.

The perfect cadence of their coming

made my jumps a spastic dance,

like one of Chaplin's:

funny, but urgent.

Now I, as warrior, know:

I am the robin that I shot.   I am the boy,

the bow,

the archer,

the arrow.

And my death is close.

And your death is close,

close enough now for death to be a teacher,

close enough for death to be a stout wall

to put our backs against

and move the heavy things

that we must move.

  

It is ourselves

that we must move.

Our fear of one another

and of our very selves

is the finger on the button

calling down that impersonal killing    

which will become,

for each of us,

such a personal death.                 

We are the strike plan,

the rocket engine.

We are the target.

We are the bomb.                           

                                            

Look,                                       

it comes to this:    

                                            

we are all different, and

we are all the same.

What life wants is diversity,

but if our way of life

holds the differences between us

so profound that only

death will make us all the same, then

death will make us all the same.                                © Dean Metcalf 1983, 2013