Tarin Kot
We
follow
a whorl of valley,
where valleys convene
giant thumbprints of hard ridges,
towns and green-zones, tickled with poppy fields
trickled by snowmelt
& ancient obligation.
I’m
locked in this
hard steel mobile box, facing an
animated commando,
deeply young & fit & handsome,
who spoons his poor weapon like a lover
and who, on the inward flight on a C130J
had been reading Trading Futures
for Dummies
He’s
telling me now:
The 82nd airborne,
choppers, wow, they’re great guys,
don’t hesitate flying into a hot-zone,
dropping you on a narrow ridge – jump out
on a knife-edge where you fight through the dust –
we take it from there,
it’s fantastic!
Bushmaster
rolls along on tread,
lord, protect us all
from IEDs, some wired
fertilizer bag under a road
& a man with a beard
& a mobile
phone.
The
adjacent
Commando says:
The airborne guys, they came to our camp –
our code was Wolf red, theirs Wolf blue – they found us
& said WE’RE WOLVES TOO! We all howled –
they’re such great guys!
And I’m sure
they are.
But we can’t
Escape the deep
& tribal business which falls
beneath river stones, iced waters, scooping the valleys,
& high upland snow peaks where jet-streams gust.
Those wispy clouds shaped like squadrons
of disarticulating men,
blown slowly apart
in a stark
blue
&
over the edge
of flinty mountains.
Ridges knapped by some humongous adze,
they swirl, where Chinooks’ incumbent rotors grasp
the thumb of dearth, thumb of numb
thumb of rubble’n’dust
thrum of a Chinook
gasping for relevance in
the thinnest
of
air.