Teeth and Bone
                                by David

                                                (See To Make a Bed)

Afghanistan has me away from lakes.
Away from shore, from peace.
Sometimes I think of the Illinois River,
the way it runs over slick rocks.
Alligator gar swim against the flow
during the warm summers.
They lay their eggs among the stones;
their skeletons, armored by white bone scales,
are washed onto the shore after their deaths.
I save their hard remains.  I let them dry at home,
until nothing but teeth and bone are left.
More than once my brother and I, we fished
until the sun set red over the clear water,
catching small bass and bream.
But I am a long, wild way from that.
Afghanistan is not easy: desert, mountains, Old Testament issues.
Old men in streets, their palms over and up,
women covered by blue burkhas, their hands crinkled.
They say you can tell a people
by how they treat their animals.
Donkeys are here overburdened and underfed.
Everyone here builds tall walls
to keep other Afghans away.
Even doves starve.
Beggars congregate around Mazar’s Blue Mosque,
a tall building with domes and minarets.
A man who keeps sandals on his small hands—
because he hasn’t got feet—
circles and pads about the streets.
He has flopped in front of our car before,
so near that we nearly killed him.
Funny, how men protect their hands,
even as they try to commit suicide.
Sometimes I think of the Atchafalaya,
the swamps and the brackish bayous
of southern Louisiana.
You can catch crabs until you’re tired:
lower a piece of meat on string
into water, and pull a crab back up.
Sometimes I have to remember
the world’s bigger than this nation.
But other times, Afghanistan just stares at me
and I look back, searching.

 

 

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