Days Marked on My Calendar

Days Marked on My Calendar

Check marks on the calendar, cemetery crosses
x-out hours of slow, agonized silence
fanning the flames of my fears from the front line
As I read new names;

youthful names from Akron, Boston, Chicago,
Darbyville, Eagle Point-an alphabet soup
of America’s place names, a litany droning
deafly in my ears

magnifying the hum of death’s dismal dirge.
Each day a lottery, a lethal game of chance,
Baghdad’s unending shell game, impersonal,
randomly choosing,

slovenly selecting young souls for slaughter-
Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters-defenders
whirling dutifully in the desert of history
like dust in the wind.

Each anxious day, petrified, expecting your
number to appear, imagining life without you,
imagining an unimaginable stark whiteness
spinning through darkness.

The final mark, the last cross, the terminus of
your duty penciled out this November ninth
when you landed on Fort Carson’s black tarmac
body and mind whole.

My calendar, now a souvenir, a keepsake-
A reminder, a cicatrix on my being.
Scars of war, etched-out crosses, in memory
of  fallen soldiers