The Draft
All memories ignite, he says, recalling
the odor of accelerants and charred
friends. Yesterday I walked to the sea
and looking into its deep crush
sensed something unseen washing
out, between tides and a shell-cut foot,
sand and the gull’s drift, or the early names
I assign to faces. This is not sadness.
Somewhere the called numbers meet.
“The Draft” first appeared in Taos Journal of International Poetry & Art.
O at the Edges 
Heartbreaking.
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Thank you, Leslie. There are so many stories out there…
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A friend’s husband had been in-country for less than a day when his commanding officer took him and two other guys up river for a couple of klicks. When they returned their camp had been decimated. He was never the same.
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That would do it.
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I like (intellectually) and dislike (fear) the Buddhist idea of emptiness, that we arise from emptiness (a void of potential being) and return to it. Your image of the ocean washing out coupled with “the early names I assigned to faces” reminded me of that teaching. But your reassurance at the end gave me comfort.
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I like that concept but still admit to a seed of distrust.
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Buddhist concepts are merely semantics that we “fear” because we are also assigning value to them. It is easy to not fear something we add no value to. Dead squirrels fear nothing.
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This one is a tour de force. I’d say that the “shell-cut foot” prohibits empty resignation. Its sting immortalizes those early names, faces, and their called numbers — reverently and aptly so.
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Those were such strange times, but our current “all-volunteer” military hasn’t changed circumstances much. Now, as they did then, the privileged classes mostly avoid serving.
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Great poem, RO.
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Thanks, Jeff. Sort of a minimalist take on so much of my life…
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You do yourself an injustice by calling it minimalist. It’s just compact, even truncated … “sensed something unseen washing / out” has nothing minimal about it. There’s no room for anything in this poem but good lines. The pairing of “early” names you’ve “assigned” to faces with the doom of numbers being called, all these things say what they need to say without you saying anything for them. The recurring tide of the living and the dead, the floating away, the pain of detail, it’s all there with nothing missing.
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Well, I got nuthin to add to that. Thanks, Jeff!
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“something unseen washing out…” beautiful line…
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Thanks, Daniel. We may not see it, but we know it’s there.
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So powerful 💛
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Thank you, Val.
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All memories ignite, he says, recalling the odor of accelerants and charred
friends.
Feel this
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Do you think all those lost numbers lost in the conflict are washing up in the grains of sand??
Happy New Year Bob!
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