My Pacemaker (poetry pantry 51)

Evening horizon appears bruised.

Sunlight slithers off, silently.

Darkness creeps, cougar-like,

Crisp shadows chill skin.

And then,

Eyes erupt, silence shatters, tear’s heave.

Sheet of paper, official, type written,

Trembles in hand,

Rattling, snake-like, after a strike,

Fangs moist, blood stained.

Frightful words, venomous,

Surge though veins,

Numb arms, throat,

Breath paralyzed,

Death stalks heart.

Collapsed to dust,

Curl in ball,

Frail, tumbleweed-like,

Wind rushes by.

Pray to roll away, roll away

Swoosh along prairie flat

To wherever tumbleweeds go.

But I lay like a stone;

A headstone,

Marking the end of my life.

My Johnny

Won’t be marching

Home again.

And then,

A little heart renewed life.

I imagined it no bigger than Johnny’s,

When his mother,

Probably dancing with him now,

First told me he was coming.

Being a father was a good thing,

Back then.

The medal dangled from a ribbon,

Wide purple with thin white stripes,

Heart shaped, bordered with Heaven’s gold.

On the front,

George Washington’s profile in a sea of purple,

On the back,

“For Military Merit.”

It felt cool in my fist.

I clenched it,

Trying to find life,

A reason,

A power.

A hope.

The beginning of a prayer.

Anything.

And then,

I squeezed the medal so hard

My palm bled.

I looked.

I gasped.

I gazed.

I knew.

I sensed a breeze, warm.

A voice, I didn’t notice on the prairie.

With each wisp of wind, I heard,

“I Know,”

Reminding me, “I know.”

Every time the wind blew, a whisper,

“I know.”

I saw, I listened, I survived.

Johnny’s body stopped a bullet streaking for an Afghan girl;

A county’s future.

I wear the Purple Heart with pride,

Pinned over my own;

My pacemaker.

And now,

I leave the prairies to the tumbleweeds.

I spend a lot of time in the mountains,

Me and wind,

Standing on a great granite rock,

Taking turns

Saying,

“I know.”