Home after three years in the Navy Christopher Lee Miles Poetry

local_library Home after three years in the Navy

by Christopher Lee Miles

Published in Issue No. 164 ~ January, 2011

Noise once filled this abyss, a seething hullabaloo
That sounded hot, felt rippled and unsure of itself, 
Butit sang, voice rising over low soybean bushes—

It was two boys chasing possums with sticks, or leaping   
From top-edge of half-emptied silo to sink waist-deep   
In cool grain—It’s windbreak-beat blended balmy cowpies

Tossed high enough to land on a head, coating a face 
With hay and straw-jammed globules—Or piercing, it would stab   
And cut, suddenly tear an eyelid away, or skin

A hand, remove three fingers caught between the hot black   
Rubber belt and the wheeling aluminum disc 
Of the spinning electric motor—Or still, silent,

And lost, that music could shut your eyes, or open them, 
And, with a damp napkin, daub them in water: you’re watching   
The leaving notes glint like steel beads falling from a plane:

The far-off explosion of its bright wings has called you 
Away, to the vast, careless sea—where you will remain.

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Christopher Lee Miles' work appears in this fall’s “Veterans of War” issue from the Connecticut Review. He is a US Navy veteran and was deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. He lives in Fairbanks, Alaska.

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