Not the Emperor

(not a Wallace Stevens poem)

I see the dead man’s feet

protruding from underneath

the clean-ish white sheet.

His widow sits beside him in grief,

not her first loss, maybe her last,

as tomorrow may kill her, too.

Forty thousand dead for nothing,

and my mind plays tricks on me,

reminding first of the Stevens poem,

The Emperor of Ice Cream

and then I wonder how they find

thousands of clean sheets to cover

all the dead in a war zone.

Anything to not think about

the evil of killing innocents,

to not think about the babies

and old men and mothers and fathers.

My mother is dead on this Mothers Day,

but that is normal, she would be ninety-five

if she was here, the babies, and children,

the bombs, the close range rifle shots,

the starvation, I must not think or speak of these,

only of a man’s feet protruding, of ice cream,

of thousands of clean sheets,

these I am allowed to contemplate.