A Poem for Memorial Day: "Taking Chances"

Last night I watched HBO's movie, "Taking Chance," about escorting a dead marine home to burial in Wyoming and I couldn't sleep all night because the movie didn't have more than the most fleeting courage to question the Iraq war and the country that took this PFC's life. So this morning I tried to conduct my own memorial service. Chance Phelps was the name of the marine who died and Cindy Sheehan was, to me, the name of the mother he left behind.

TAKING CHANCES
for Chance & Cindy

1
The river was on its best behavior today.
It didn't want to thirst men
or beast. It didn't want to shoulder tide
or head for a mothering sea.
It didn't want to chase the scudding clouds
it mirrored over head.
It just wanted to run so slow
it could pretend to stand still
long enough for just
this one piercing, sheltering once
to echo once
for always.

2
Alias looked in the river.

Alias saw the man he used to be
poised forever for a drink
from his 10 gallon hat.

Alias saw a convoy of minnows
practicing zig
zag maneuvers
with a precision of survival
men could never learn to imitate.

Alias felt the ache of morning
like a soft shrapnel of song
its refrain of loves lost or found
the kindly remnant of struggles with an angel.

Alias heard the wounds of time
ringing more than hurting
somewhere inside a vast inoperable longing
everyone he had ever loved knew
and kept to himself.

3
The wind ruffled the river's surface
blurring the algae masses
and the long limber strands of grass.
Chance remembered when the river played host
to a rampage of waters
surging with ends of days
for livestock and homestead
surrendered to the mercy of mutability.
His great grandfather was famous for saying
his was the last generation
to know more men who died from flood
than war. "You could go years without
hearing of a death not due to natural causes."
It all belonged to God then, Chance thought,
a taker of life who stayed true
to a gentleness of giving.
Suddenly he felt the urge
to pray for days
when the worst inexplicable that could happen
was a saw mill accident or steam boat collision.
"Restore us to old beginnings," he requested
there in the quiet
peering into the waters
"when rivers were gods
and gods were only good
for granting things
like starting over
and over
again."

4
Peter fished in these rivers
taking weights from the Galilean's tackle box
slowly filling the floor of the row boat
with groupers and bass
for a feast the shady after
noon of that very bright morning.
Papa John was always telling the other fishermen
there was nothing to worry about
and that the very least that could happen
was never less
than enough
for a feast.

5
Never mourn the dead
the Galilean said. For better or worse
it's over for them. Pray for the living
who today marry one
to one another
in a brief embrace of water
before rising to the rest of their lives
from a containment
that wishes men
only deepest well
being.

6
Alias knew the river would betray its coldest depths
to reflect heights
that only birds could reach
as if they were thoughts of men
sent to seed clouds with the rain
no river
or ocean it flowed to
could ever dream of
praying for.

--Narberth, Memorial Day, 2010