Negative Identity

 “war against war is…no holiday excursion,”

 --William James, “The Moral Equivalent of War"

Who I am, my choices

defined by the negative: 

the one who chose not.

Marching brass, rippled flag,

good men & women pressed

to lift hearts for a cause,  

and I instead stood for not, 

affirmed James’s “moral

equivalent”—discipline, courage--

and I, like James, who also did

not, negotiated no holiday truce,

but stayed and spoke and wrote.

Natural Disaster

Along the lapping shoreline,

thousands of rotting alewives

beached at our feet,

a black funnel passed over 

two men, two women, two couples

who later heard, separately,

on the radio a tornado touched down

wrecking a house inland;

they paid no mind,  

grilled hamburgers, sipped beer,

observed the glee of slippery boys

surfing on six-inch waves;

after dark, bug bites rose

on the inner thigh, simulated

the itch of sex—

such surprise that summer

before the kids could swim,

both marriages were dissolved

and the mayor declared

lake water undrinkable.