What did we do with the freedom?

What did we do with the freedom
my father bought with six years of his life
and nine hundred miserable miles marching,
a prisoner among prisoners?

Palimpsest

Living on a surface
scraped clean by time,
the geology of generations,
the faint striations of what was
once perfected and worn away
to nuance and supposition;
not one scratch, a truth,
an approximation
of the silence
of a ghost.

Two Minutes

I don’t need silence

for memory to work
even when remembering
becomes that different thing
remembrance

End All

one hundred
years of war
to end all wars

gravestones
names inscribed
the written record
the dying and the dead
on every side
ledgers of death