He can tell where he is
By the echo on the lake,
With his paddle brushing
Against pickerelweed
And the air giving him its
Own path over the entire water.
He talks of battle, of those long dead,
Far beyond the hearing of other ears.
He recalls one summer at dawn,
With each soldier browsing, taking
A step forward, until something
Happened and across their clothes
Blood had grown out of all they had done.
Now he calls out to my aunt at dusk —
Above the heads of birds, above shore fowl
And land far back into the rocks.
And she'll call back to him from a small wharf,
She'll holler him back to shore.
[revision of May 2003 poem entitled Blind Veteran]
by James Wm. Chichetto
... who is a freelance poet, with eight books of verse to his
credit, and works appearing in The Native American Poetry
Anthology, The First Abbey Wood Anthology, The
Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix,
The Colorado Review, Gargoyle,
The Manhattan Review, Poem,
The Paterson Review. He is related to combat
veterans of the Korean War and World War Two; and teaches at
Stonehill College.