WHY HE SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN SOLD

6,000 ROUNDS OF AMMUNITION

Because the young woman in the theater’s first row

                raises zinnias and her tomatoes are ripening,

because her baby is teething

and her husband, away on business,

                dreams of three little girls, bare-legged,

                eating ice cream cones.

Because, in July, monarchs lay eggs

on the underside of milkweed leaves,

and a hummingbird’s flutter

stirs the nasturtiums, and

because today the sun rose with a green flash,

le rayon vert, and I believed Jules Verne

who wrote that those who see this

will know love. 

Because the white-bearded man in the third row

has a schnauzer that needs to be walked,

and because his grandchildren are visiting tomorrow

and he has four quarts of his own spaghetti sauce

                on a shelf in the freezer .

Because the balding man in the fourth row

                doesn’t want to die lonely,

and because the man and woman beside him

                 are afraid to make a commitment.

Because the artist in the back of the theater

will, for the rest of his life, swirling his brush

into Winsor red, see blood,

and because the University student in row five,

                who speaks Shoshone with his grandmother,

is translating Native American myths:

how in the beginning, Wolf, the creator,

shooting an arrow beneath the body of the dead,

could call them back to life. 

© Copyright, Suellen Wedmore.
All Rights Reserved.