A fantastic cloud formation as the sun was setting on the cliffs of Sedona red rock.
My cousin, a poet, wrote the following thinking of her father, a Korean War medic in the trenches. Sad to see his decline.
In honor of those who serve, have served, and those who gave all.
Dear David, thank you for this gift this morning. It gave me a good cry I didn't know I needed. Spectacular capture, words fall short but for me, but this is what I heard.
As if we might too soon forget
the heavens telegraphed the lost blood in cloud
spreading its message in the unnatural beauty
of what could only be seen as such after our long
lusting after war.
Not withstanding, the existence of wars in the making,
wars crowning between the broken thighs of powers
grinding at the bit, held by who the world knows not,
the Master of Restraint.
As for me, my memory yanked me back in fits and starts throughout a day of desperation,
or had I willed it so?
My father and I side by side, filling out the online questionnaire to prove the origins of buried shrapnel in his face,
severed wires in his brain, frost-bit feet -- gasping at the question: Did you get blood on you?
"Did I get blood on me? There was blood everywhere."
My hands dropped from the keyboard. My head slumped on the desk.
Did he get blood on him? A medic on the front lines of the Korean War.
No gun but bayonet.
We all got blood on us. We've been bleeding ever since.
Tonia Colleen Martinwww.toniacolleenmartin.com
