“Autumn Sequel” (for Duane Esposito)

My friend teaching Tim O’Brien’s

The Things They Carried.  He’s

wearing his Nirvana tee, jeans

happy-face patched on one knee….

He asks, Can we diminish grief–

the burning huts & hearts–

or learn to understand it,

even decades later, by crafting

novels, poems, stories?

One student says her vet father’s

been in therapy for years

& is still nuts.  We laugh,

relieved.  I see a tear glint

on my friend’s gold earring….

Years later, remembering,

wondering what, if anything,

that classroom could possibly

illuminate or assuage,

I heard gunshots: a flash

of Pennsylvania forest in my mind,

The Deer Hunter, that animal

Michael will kill, beautiful,

almost immortal, its dead eye

seeing everything that no one

should have to carry.