Let Sleeping Boys Lie

Saturday morning, my living room's
wall-to-wall sleeping bags and bodies --
beautiful boys flung down in the ruins
of Risk's plastic troops and cannons and countries.
Newly furred arms and legs at odd angles,
they lie where they fell among the black cords
of digital war machines in tangles
that trail like barbed wire across the floor.

Mothers at Troy, Antietam, Agincourt,
stepped just this way over still limbs
of silent young men, making sure
with wild glances each one was not him --
O God, let his wars be always in fun.
Let this soldier, my son, sleep fiercely on.





Originally published in Nimrod, Spring/Summer 2006.