“You don’t count the dead
when God’s on your side.”
~ Bob Dylan
Your tanks are pure
metal, impenetrable,
yet they stall out
over open ground,
gauges collapsing
at the glint of a mine.
Confused by local road
signs, they bumble
into nameless crossroads
in deep snow, lose
their way in the
dense forests
between villages. Bog
down. Lose track.
Diesel toads squatting
in the frozen mud
of a No Man’s Land
strewn with small
blue flames. Muzzles
exhale a final round.
Spent, the gun tube
is now a tunnel where
light expires, choices
dwindle: stay armored,
dogged down in
the bottomless dark,
or dismount the turret
to stand in bloody
puddles showered with
lacerating shards of rain.
— RICHARD HEDDERMAN
Richard Hedderman’s latest book of poems is Choosing a Stone (Finishing Line Press). His work has been published in dozens of journals in the U.S. and abroad. A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, he has been a Guest Poet at the Library of Congress, performed his writing with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and is formerly Writer-in-Residence at the Milwaukee Public Museum. He lives in Milwaukee.