This War

How does it fit? Where does it fit?

A war made for TV, a reluctant war

Filling screens with carefully chosen

Words, words that can half mean or

Not mean at all. It’s newsworthy or

Takes up newsworthy space and time

Fills in between sports championship

Games, becomes a game of its own.

This is what we get when we let things

Go and think we can watch from these

Bleachers, the same ones we watched

From during the last war, last Superbowl

Last NBA finals. We are warrior watchers

Getting ready to go at it once again, like we

Did, like we did, and will probably have to

Do again.

                      Museums

Local museums, the kind historical societies

Put together, play time and place off each other.

A few hundred years ago, there was where we are

Right now, there were people trying to get by, get

On, living their lives creating this history that we

Can view and measure against now. There can be

Things we recognize in the places in the faces of

These folks. First descriptions, then drawings, then

Paintings, and finally photographs taking us through

The ongoing development of both cameras and

The people posing – this is the way a place becomes.

That is how we get to see them, know them. This is

Museum 101, and the locals have caught on. Here

We are, some strangers looking, touring through

Yet another place, and here they are trying to slow

Us a bit and get us to see where we are, not just in

This moment but in a larger context – the context of

Time and the idea of place, their place.

          Book

This book needed to be,

had to become, became

then shouldered its way

to the front of the shelf

with so much to say, so

much to tell us, trippling

on its pages, not mouthing

like the others often did,

often do. This book reads

itself to me, handles it all

so well, like a parent, like

a grandparent reading to

an attentive child, bounces

me on its knee. This book

was meant to be, was most

of the reason the word “book”

was ever said. It shines, it

shadows, it knows the tint of

every emotion available to us.

It fills in the blanks, crosses its

t’s and dots all our i’s, commits

it all to words on its pages, does

us a great service – it summarizes

who we are and what we’re about.

It’s the book that needed to be put

together and then was.