BY LAWRENCE HALL

“My stretcher is one scarlet stain”

– Robert W. Service, “The Stretcher Bearer”

In illo tempore:

I don’t know that anyone shouted, “Corpsman up!”

Like in the movies; I was already up

There, where smoking metal scraps stopped in some kid’s flesh

Red fragments of flesh screaming in the sun

Later:

Carrying bodies of literature was impossible

But I tried; Wordsworth and Keats during the day

Holes in the patients and in sterile drapes

Red fragments of flesh in the E.R. at night

Now:

In the evenings I carry Wordsworth outside

And my older self, to a chair at dusk