JUDE GOODWIN

A POEM
October 25

The Soldier

Morning headlines with coffee,
toast. Peanut butter drips
onto the newspaper,
I wipe it away with my finger,
a greasy spot blooms
into the shape of a soldier digging
a foxhole, the chipping of his spade
dull in the early light, one man
lifting dirt, one hole growing
deep enough to take him in.
I carry my mug to the garden
where a dozen petunias root
in a terra cotta tub and a neighbour
reports she had been kept awake
all night by the sounds of shoveling.
On my lap the paper curls into a tube,
a launcher of indirect thought,
while in his spider hole the soldier
is stopping bullets with dirt.