Still Not Sorry

You are sipping chai and I, American black.

You speak of The Last Just War,

and in a breath condemn the administration

for its evils in Iraq.

We should not be over there, you say.

But I can’t commiserate,

for what do we know of war – evil or just?

War is war, is what it is, is what happens,

but war to us

is our fathers,

and our fathers’ fathers,

baseball standings,

movie stars,

the nephew of a friend from school,

something to discuss.

War is not our business, what we do.

You are a teacher, and I am a bum.

We do not own guns, or hold office,

or protest in public, or boycott anyone.

We lock our doors at night and that is enough.

So they fight in your name, you say,

and that perturbs you.

But you’ve changed your name so many times,

it would be hard to pin the purple hearts on you.

A name! They’ll slap a name like Freedom on a bear trap if it suits them,

and you will not be anywhere near the woods.

We pay for the coffee and tea,

we pay the crazy price,

the exorbitant tax,

and tip the pierced barista for her scowl.

I wash my hands,

and I’m still not sorry.

I will not join your cause,

or theirs.

There’s always been the fighting kind:

Our clan came upon another, stouter, hairier clan of others.

We needed their meat, and it was time to take it.

The sounds of aggression – the high-pitched and the low-pitched –

called me to the moment.

And my brothers went rushing, and I was struck,

and I grabbed what struck me, and it was a girl one,

and I twisted her neck, and she screeched and showed her teeth and would not die.

I knew to twist her neck, but a thought came up inside me.

I scanned the earth around for something hard or something sharp,

to hit, to pierce, to stop the screech, to kill the sound (she would not die).

I found a branch with a pointy end, and grabbed it,

and jabbed and jabbed and struck.

It was clumsy to me, the space between the idea of it and the action.

There was blood, good,

but the screeching became snarling and the eyes locked with mine, bad.

I had to end it soon - an animal nearing death is evermore powerful,

everless predictable, has ever so much less to protect.

I twisted the neck all the way,

and it was ended.

Dropping the body, I turned to my brothers, and found them all engaged

I brought my branch and another I had found into the center.

It was enough to shake the branches in the faces of the others,

the leaves, like teeth, dappling the forest light.

The chattering leaves, the angry trees,

our enemies were frightened.

We left with meat, and minor wounds.

We left in haste, away from the madness.

I clutched my branches tightly at the moment that I saw

no brother of mine ahead of me on the retreat.

I was leading us back to home.

And I’m still not sorry.

We came to a clearing and I saw us there.

We looked clumsy to me, the space between the years had collapsed.

We were sipping chai and American black,

speaking of wars with numbers,

sitting in chairs,

clothes on our backs,

speaking a language,

punching at keys,

giants we seemed,

wrestling with our tired minds

over what I did not have the words to say.