Vietnam
Ione Citrin
Lynn Strongin
I.
Holed up roomed down:
to where loss hits home: on your upper lip, a fine down.
Lacing your wolverines in red flare of kerosene.
My years alone? Feral, like the lion:
I draw them as one would coat-lining
or cloak
against the world.
Our fine-sculpted forebears
in oval
cracked frames surround us, unkissed for years.
Your water-pure profile
like a woman hunting
carved in cameo.
When we were young? (When were we young?) Both smoking
arched against evening sky, greyhound thin:
now prayers lengthen as our years shorten.
Tromping in
a frost-blast following
you hang your windbreak on the hall-nail.
The hourglass sparkles, thin blue:
Time’s running thru us.
(Or are we running thru time?)
II.
All labor-day weekend, I wrestled with the power of the angel
in the painting:
fought conscience & won.
For, after all, I remember skies watercress green:
World’s the Belfry
Bell’s
Tongue, our Pity, rung.