Heavy-Legged Soldiers

I.

All day, the men fails to bring coyotes
out of storm. By sand-banks, in dream—

or not in dream but in a wet, dream

slow reality: soldiers poise, in narrow rows,

heavy-legged as though with hesitance of failure
of what happens—or is about to. Overhead, thunder

and lightning. Do the soldiers find the lightning,
wrapped in yellow, intimidating? By the shore,

waves rise, up—to bees, to birds—as though they are wet,
blue answers of Babylon's tower and not just blue

waves, the harbor rocking like the one abandoned

soldier to whom, suddenly—come clarity, and black.

II.

There are men in the tufts: some dead, some
only like the antelope for shelter, others,

fallen, how they hold and get hold by each
other. I attempt to help but no help is given—

the wind, the bombs, this morning, the light
as though they also were enemies and not just

the soldiers. That the light, in its wash-grey,
means Armageddon, I believe: I will die here,

as the rest, I will look up and know and, in knowing,
the light will turn, the sky become sacredom.

III.

What would the flesh taste, if flesh is all
I could taste? I mark the gull that passes

over—in fright—in feathers of course,
imagine, as with a leaF that seems to stop

half-flight, mid-flight, through the light,
the burned feathers of a gull, its roasted flesh.

IV.

I lie, in tufts. The sky turns blue
to sacredom.