Margin Notes

(1)

around the military cantonment
the way this city has grown:
a camouflage truck, a school bus,
an ambulance,
wait together for a green light

(2)

past Danang and Hue
a few miles from the DMZ
the guide pulls out two cans of coke —
one day soon, he says, 
he will move to California

(3)

origami cranes
one, two… a thousand —
waiting at the Hiroshima memorial:
things fall
things rise

(4)

the invisible wars:
the invisible dead:
“what big eyes you have,” she cried,
“the better to see you with, my dear,”
the wolf replied

(5)

on a quiet street
in Luang Prabang
the unexploded ordnance centre —
a grandmother covers
a little girl’s eyes

(6)

downtown Berlin:
in a dozen languages
they ask for directions —
to the topography of terror
to the palace of tears

(7)

at the bottom of every sea
a ship, a plane, a soldier
asking evolution
the same question:
“why?”

(8)

on large banners
in the Warsaw museum
bits of resistance poetry —
outside, a man dozes
in a rush-hour bus
heading to the new old town

(9)

folding a world map
war zone collapsing into war zone
someone will die
from something that will fall
from someone else’s sky

(10)

late March in London
a fog-laden sky
goes from pewter to troubled black
somewhere the sun has set
somewhere the sun has to set

(11)

space and time morph
at yet another border crossing —
she bows under the weight
of an entire lifetime
stuffed into an old backpack


(12)

Kanchanaburi war cemetery
so many people
so far from home:
here lie so many stories
unheard/ untold

(13)

adrift, afraid,
on a refugee boat:
home, already
a memory
limp from cold sea-spray

(14)

ringing in the desert air
children reciting the alphabet
A for anti-aircraft guns
B for bombs, big, bad, bombs
C for compassion that still hasn't come