War Diary

He described the rising sun
as though he had never seen

the sun before. Twenty-one
years old, he hadn’t, of course,

not like that, looking out from
the deck of a troop ship bound

for the East. As it rose,
an oracle aflame, full

of warning he dared not heed,
he suppressed the call of home.

Months later, in Burma now,
mud swallowing his boots, he

saw his first dead body, a
Japanese soldier on the

side of the road, half his head
blown away, so small and thin

he could have linked his living
hands around the boy and wept.