Across the River - Somewhere in the War Between the States - from my book, BATHED IN ABRASION

I do believe
that
as I had looked
across the river -

toward the embankment
on the other shore -

I do believe
that
I had seen
the silvery-blue
glint of steel
hidden in the
soft and simple
branches of that
shrub -

of that Missouri
gooseberry.

I know
that steel
was a piece
of the conflict;

a piece of our
fratricide;

a piece of the
war between the
States.

It hung there
still as the
fragrance of
the flowering milkweed.

The flower's sweetness
suspended in the
rising

heated moisture
of the sun on earth -

the sun on soil.

The steel suspended
on the anticipation
of the darkness
of night.

There comes a wearing
down on me; a wearing
down of waiting

for the enemy
to strike.

It is a wearing down
in my center.
It is a wearing down
in my being.

Is this how
I shall go mad;

sitting here picking out the
steel from among the
shrubs, from among the flowers.
Slowly taking away my
thoughts, my reason, my soul
- my very desire to live.

Ants carrying their eggs
away to God knows where.

This is how a river cuts deep;
this is how a rock is smoothed;

Aeons of of flooding
and glacial drag.

My grandpa told
me this would come,
if we spent too much time
facing into

the bloody
and bruised business
of fighting our own -
of killing our brothers.

Water itself can wear
things smooth. It
just takes time.

And me, here on
this side of the river; and,
perhaps
only one battlefield
away from death -
the Great Abrasion.

Me, three years
into this war, I
am worn down smooth.
This constant conflict
of fighting and death
has taken all the roughness
from the edges
of my days.

I am not here
aeons to stand the
glacial tears and torrential
floods of sand and stone
on rock and earth.

But, I am bathed in
abrasion.

And, if I live to see
an end to this bitter anguish
and everlasting conflagration,

then I
shall have no
roughness left
in me. I will only sit
and stare - hollowed
out by what this
freedom has come
down to.  I will have
no words because of
all that has just

transpired.