Home now and clean,
yet cold still and frightened,
the soldier is wrapped
in a blue cotton sheet.
He’d been off fighting the enemy
on a military coast.
There is no one about;
no voice to call out a warning
or reprimand.
*
Home is where the door unlocks
and the key put aside
and the callused foot bathed
and a heart murmur steadied by a pill;
this is a place to lie down in
or to where, someday,
place teeth in a glass—
give up moving up – and
fanning the sparks.
