The War

You decided to wait for the piano,

For the crash, so that the first crack across you

Would be your last, no preparing anything.

You turned the back of your thoughts to everything

That stank of daily news, so as not to see

Any hint of what the local disaster

Could be, within the war’s general context.

You wavered after you deployed the term, war.

Your whole life there have been wars, over there wars,

Never war in your town, never bombs near you,

So that nothing much seems more matter-of-fact

Than war, and nothing much more histrionic.

Is this the decade, the era, over there

Wars catch the wind blowing them homeward? Is this

The time the rumors become the real? You will

Not prepare for it. At best you unprepare.