Peace

With help from A.D. Hope, John McCrae, Munro Leaf, Carl Sandburg, Randell Jarrell, Wilfred Owen, and Louise Gluck.

i love my children living, alive in this world;

my allegiance to them. those old men safe in bed can go fuck themselves.

you will find my babes in fields, not flanders between the crosses, but ferdinand’s,

their bellies to the working grass that covers all, heads in the flowers.

they will not wake six miles from earth, hunched, wet fur frozen,

or limp on, blood-shod;

not if i have anything to say about it, or still draw breath;

my selfishness runs cell-deep.

yours too, mamas?  

we did not get through here for that machine.

they may not know how much terror we bear,

with our love more ferocious than our faith.