Two Poems

Captain James Moore

Below the towpath, a dried-up canal
and a decaying wooden sign:
Soldiers graves.

Humming a tune from Hamilton, I march
across one of six camelback
bridges that

stretches across the Delaware River
into a field of twenty-two
unmarked

gravestones where a red wagon is tied to
a sweet gum tree. A picnic table in

the middle of a desolate winter. The
headstone of Captain James Moore, twenty-four,

died in the Revolutionary War,
a hero, guilty of his heroics. I'm

guilty of my drought. The Delaware, where
General Washington launched his
audacious

raid on the Reds. I am nothing until I
make myself. Starvation, killed in action
and disease

—is that what it takes to find value in
a world lacking in value? Nothing
to take

and maybe all to give. Too much to give
for the purple heart pinned to my lapel.

A purple marker signifies the trail head.
I trail off. I am not throwing away my shot.

For who I am, for all. For a cardinal
hunting in fallen trees. For the fallen trees.

Alexander Hamilton said, "A promising
officer, James Moore died from a short but
excruciating fit of illness."

My only promise is to make promises.

 

Somewhere Else. But Here

A dark field. A row of forbidden
oak trees, slanting down the virtuous
Revolutionary Road, where they
disappear into the shadows. At
the foot, where I came unto myself,

I'm bent down, picking and plucking
poisonous mushrooms from my dense
heart at the edge of dread and fooled
into thinking I'm somewhere else.
But I'm right here. Still.

Without faith.

No Virgil. No guide. No protector.
Just a moonless evening, imbalanced
to the ascending truth of what lies
ahead and my likely disappearance
into the grave mesh of the in-between,

needing to tell you of the crossroads
beyond the suspending strips of
unbearable light where its
eternal lines crack and break
and you will listen.