A Thought

I remember exactly where I was standing

when the thought dropped on me

like a bomb from the

summer sky.

In my backyard,

in the fragrant grass,

newly mown by the mill janitor.

I stood among decapitated dandelions

and the stubs of arbor-day treelets

we children brought home

so proudly from school

only to be shorn

with the grass.

(My childhood’s singular violence,

this slaying of flowers

and infant trees.)

And this was the thought

that exploded

inside me:

The war so recently ended,

the one named the Second because

the War to End All Wars

had not,

Photo by Maarten van den Heuvel on Unsplash

the war that had informed so many of my games—

‘B-o-m-b-a-r-d-s  o-v-e-r  T-o-k-y-o!’

while dropping a marble

onto the patterned,

living-room rug—

that war had happened for real

in other children’s

yards.

The lumbering tanks,

the machine guns and grenades,

the parachutes blooming in the sky—

all offered up to American children

in Saturday matinee newsreels

between Bugs Bunny

and The Three Stooges—

had played out its noise and fury,

its blood and desecration

in the neighborhoods,

in the hearts

of children

as real

as I.

And standing there

in the sweet summer air,

I asked,

“Why them

and not

me?”

The question burns in me still.