Preflight at Dawn

I dreamed I was in the airport
and I heard a voice
asking how many of us plan
that our soldiers, sailor and corps
leave us as a boy
to return a man

Perhaps it was the voices of the dead
awakened me in the dark
The voice sounded broken and vaguely like
that of Walter Cronkite

I remember the faces as I write
Enlisted men in blue jeans
They looked about five
Seventeen, Nine
Somehow at the same time

Great Britain thanked those that survived
By creating a National Health Service

England realized
The money they spent making war
saved their economy - why not build schools and hospitals
and so they built more

America
builds pharmacies
That sell us our groceries
seventeen kinds of coke
five hundred kinds of cigarettes
grape flavored rat poison
and toys

And then my cats
crepescular
meowed at the door

I fed enough to make them hungry
Then turned them to the cold
where they keen to the sound of sleepyheaded birds
the half awake chipmunk and somnabulent squirrel

And as I opened the door
In walked kali - the black one
from the night before