David A. Bart

Night Patrol
We spotted the woman
as she emerged from smoking wreckage
on the road to Kabul.
She wouldn't halt when I shouted halt,
screamed halt, and I might have become
that triggered lieutenant
who killed an unarmed civilian
but she was coming toward us
holding something in her arms.

   At home in Oregon,
   this was the time my wife
   would be putting our son to bed.

Night patrol in the desert.
My squadron was unnerved.
I raised my weapon
at a stand of trees I mistook
for the enemy. In the dark
they resembled the skinny,
brown limbed village kids,
boy soldiers who never moved
until I looked away.
Or maybe, like the blind man
in the gospels, I had regained
some lost sight and now I saw
men as trees, but walking.

   Sometimes our son falls asleep
   on the sofa and my wife
   carries him to bed.

We saw smoke and burnt metal
and something climbing out of it;
a shrouded revenant that became
a woman who rose from a smoldering bus
and walked into the thicket of rifles
we were pointing at her face.
She had something in her arms.

   When my wife carries our son
   to bed a blanket covers all
   but his dangling limbs.

This woman was carrying a bundle.
When she came close enough
I saw a child’s legs protruding.
They were as pale and pristine
as those of a marble cherub,
that kind of ultimate perfection
one attains only in death.

Then the woman collapsed on the ground.
The bundle fell open and inside
there was nothing more of her child.

David A. Bart (DavidABart.com) is a writer from Arlington, Texas. His poetry appears in I-70 Review, The American Journal of Poetry, Poet Lore, Slipstream, Sixfold, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Margie, Cider Press Review, San Pedro River Review, Illya’s Honey, Red River Review, Pinyon Poetry, The January Review and three anthologies from Mutabilis Press. He conducts creative writing workshops and teaches music on the elementary level.

Banner Art:
Cherubs, School of Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio or Santi), (Italian, Urbino 1483–1520 Rome), The MET

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