The Wilderness

It's a little after dusk.

Most of my men talk of a silhouette
out in the wilderness. We watch it

for hours as it stands in front of us.
It feels weirder to be stalked by
a present absence when you are already
exhausted from hauling heavy packs
over rugged terrain.

Another evening I finish setting up
a patrol base with three members in another
part of the wilderness. Nearby is a small
field with a huge cemetery. As I look
over the field, a bunch of tulips comes hurtling,
landing at my feet.

I peer out into the darkness.

The night is completely numb, the field
totally fixed. Another bunch of tulips
is lobbed at me. Another.

Are they flowers for my dead comrades?
Are they flowers for the dead children?
Are they flowers for the women gone?

In the morning, I alone sense the smell
of freshly-baked bread in the air.
A feeling of homeliness traps me.
It's so profound that I wish to run away

from this wilderness but I'm already tired
of tripping over skulls and desiccated
corpses and shards of ancient pottery
and modern warfare.
I'm the silhouette of wilderness,
my heart a cemetery, small. Rugged.

Amit Parmessur, 39, lives in Quatre-Bornes, Mauritius, where he spent his adolescence hating poetry before falling in love with its beauty. His poems have appeared in over 165 magazines, inclduing WINK, The Rye Whiskey Review, Night Garden Journal, Hobo Camp Review, Ann Arbor Review and Ethos Literary Journal. He is a two-time Pushcart Prize and two-time Best of the Web nominee.

Find more by Amit Parmessur in the Author Index.