Jon Tribble: War
Red maple, sweetgum slashed and torn
out by the roots so we could build
a jungle underneath the pines, so our
camouflage would blend us with crows’
panic, with honeysuckle and dry needles
sharpening our every feint and blur
as we spied out the enemy—ourselves.
Combatants from a neighborhood of loss
and disappointment poured into the camp
from the tar paper houses, trailer parks
that shadowed the barbed wire fences
enclosing the lake and acres of woods.
Children bussed to city schools by day
leveled their fury in our engagements.
Casualty figures from Cronkite and
Chancellor drove us into the hard
tumble and scuffle of Army recon,
VC and POWs in the neverending
ground war we waged after school,
before dinner and families beckoned,
releasing us from the frontlines.
We rigged booby traps with saplings
bent taut and ready under heavy stones,
pits concealed with scattered limbs
and leaves, vines we dangled across
paths like tripwires. Launching
fungus ears like open hands we scoured
oak logs to find for their special rot,
we battered one another with everything—
bark, pine cones, loose shoes, gum balls
with that pin cushion of spikes. Nothing
and no one escaped our missions of search
and destroy, slash and burn seriousness
that released us from the nightly news,
left Hanoi, Da Nang, Hue, Saigon, all
nightmares half a world away, a world
we feared and didn’t understand. We
fought out our childhoods in the screens
of withering branches, the backdrop of
our battles wilting and dying behind us
as we kept adding new green leaves, fresh
and supple spring limbs to our illusion.
Copyright 2017 Jon Tribble
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This entry was posted on October 4, 2017 by Vox Populi in Poetry, War and Peace and tagged anti-war poetry, boys love of war, boys playing war, Jon Tribble, violence, war, what war really is.Shortlink
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