I Can’t Feel the War 

The rain returns—sudden satin
     ponds spread on the mudflats.      

So much ground is lost—blind sky 
     mirrored where the crows held talks,

rabbits shuttled, snakes explored,
     and I walked among the faded 

tufts of grass. Now, mallards 
     in parade dress cruise-patrol 

gray plains, and I remember last
     November like I’m looking at it. 

Yes, my phone’s kept pictures, small
     flat windows. My own recollections,

grainy noise, brain’s landlocked fog.
     Here’s my chance, out in this drizzle-

splashed expanse—there’s restless music
     I can’t place, the ripples’ shimmer 

maybe wants to wake me, cold wind 
     smacks my face…but damn I can’t

let that sting in past my pores, 
     won’t have my self shaken. Wet seeps 

through my soles like disavowed 
     regret, the puddled earth accepts 

my shoes an inch—hit-bottom hint—
     but my senses won’t get urgent

word on to the core. A baffle’s
     built between me and the world. God 

help me, I can’t feel the war, 
     the here of it, till what—I’m in it 

where that legless Gazan kid stares
     through the powdered air at me, 

and then I’ll get it? Must I loiter, 
     nerves soaked in the rain of slaughter,

where the engineer from Kyiv smokes
     as he dozes in his trench, wounds leak 

and he tries to keep an ear pitched
     for what whistles toward his teeth?

Do I need to fly to Sudan 
     where that photographed man watches 

from his shadow recess blasted
     in a bullet-peppered wall, to grasp

the full reach of the fall? Must I scan
     all those pocks in clay up close

for my fresh gut sense of that death 
     sentence in all periods? God-

damn this dull inheritance—numbed
    skin of my separateness, dread’s 

learned remove. I know—it keeps me
     now from leaping prone into these 

silver sheets of cloud before me
     on the flooded ground.

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