dandelions
Anthony Liccione
it was truly a beautiful
sight to see,
as I lay on the ground
looking up
at the bright blue sky,
the planes cutting through
a downpour of jumpers,
parachutes opening up
like dandelions, hundreds
of them airborne
falling to earth
from passing planes,
others dying before
touching ground, with no
landing pad to catch
their stemmed bodies,
most of them
landing and just running,
running to where
is never known.
saw it in the war
films all the time,
but to be here
with the snow melting
against the sweat,
someone’s blood
on the mud
of my boots,
my back ripped open
that I can't move,
I’m talking to a soldier
next to me,
a hole in his throat
and jaw half gone,
who doesn’t respond
hearing the bullets flying
over me from magazines
too fast for the speed of light,
I want to
close and fold it away
tuck it in my back pocket
like the playboy magazine
we all were gazing at
in the bunks two days before,
someone is screaming
in need of paramedics,
as I hear more
foreign tongues
being exchanged,
more screams
draining away.
I think back,
away from this world,
to my boys at home,
ripping dead
parachute balls
from the summer grass,
lifting it up to their lips
and giving their biggest blow,
as we watch the
windborne seeds
disperse into the sky,
disperse and disappear
into the summer blue.