It was
in the
sunny chill of
late winter
along the
washed out
shores of
Virginia Beach where,
after our
brother's funeral,
we took a walk
in silence
from the math
negating
the sibling
equation
with a fixed
finality resembling
the
half-surreal reality of
the streets
that were lined
by palm trees
wrapped
in plastic
sleeves.
We watched the
ships
leaving port
for Iraq
while fighter
jets roared low
as they
continuously looped,
as one endless
war
flowed
senselessly into
another
endless war
like the
shrapnel our brother
still had from
'Nam.
A tangled ball
of yarn
is the crazy
strand
of a history
filled with a
sorrow
and an
emptiness,
a graceless
epiphany.
So much like
any death
in every
family.
That evening
in the parking lot
of a
convenience store, I saw
a weathered
hooker
abandoned in
the darkness,
blankly
staring at
the night's
vacancy
like a
renegade from
a Hopper
painting.
Another spirit
of our times.
