William Bibby
Poetry
1 New Poem for August 2010
Saturday, 14 Aug 2010
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LONG WAR2005 We’d seen each other before. The gaucho knifed sideways, clipped shoes dragged up like a spring, then released, bucked in, dismounted with the pump of bruise on his thigh and I caught her eye. She went to him. She rode out with her petite frame standing, sliding down with the trot and clamped shut at canter; she had tied a knot-head in the leather whip. How’s he handling the riverines? His neck seems the width of my back. I can see he’s strong I said. Her horse let the rough stones quietly move under his unshod hooves. Her shoulders curved, rexic, fleshless, perhaps older than she appeared. A life slipped quietly by, unheard, I thought. She was all nerve. I asked her what she did. Her blonde hair bounced, her buttocks rose and fell against the saddle fleece. Riding like that; cropped, stripped, adrift, across the high Andean rift. As light as a dandelion stem. I’m taking a break from Afghanistan, she said (as if she’d posed a question). From Baghram airbase. I do the Target Selection. 2010 and then digging out silence from the perpendicular sirens of mud cities are now the long slow pulses of the Mezzudin where our clients rotate with their enmities. I see him solitary, Shakespearian somehow. A golden boy whose gold had enfolded him; packed with muscle, his short Cherokee cut and soldiers skull, his skin pockmarked, grim, sitting quietly at the beach of an island in the South China Sea. He notices me. Histories of love and suffering are the same. Can I spell you your glasses? I thought Minnesota or Tennessee and above his eyes this perpetual frown. I handed him the small black Zeiss; he glued them far out to sea. How long have you got? I guessed. We’re outside the main event. Waziristan; small packs, across the fence. I faltered at how nearly I‘d forgot the exchange between homeless anxiety and the child we used to be. He put his hand up to his eyes and squeezed the tear ducts shut as clouds began to pile up on the South East Trades. |
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