Final Thoughts

A kettle of vultures spiral above the undulating waves of hot air over Baghdad like rotor blades thudding through vaporless skies dry as sand scoured bones stripped pearl by razor beaks. Cutting through the lung scalding crest in July, a Blackhawk helicopter engorged with gun strapped men, praying, chatting, reading letters from home of weddings, picnics and walks in the park— their last musings. A flash from ground scrubs heroes from the desert scape of tangerine and plum-hued sunrise. In the silent, slow-moving space between children rising from the ground shaking off the percussion — whooping and dancing on dirt mottled feet and pieces of smoking metal with burning innards of Blackhawk scudding the sand, inkish feathers without birds flurry to the earth, drifting in front of smudged faces of locals like the grit blasted names of soldiers on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall mirrored in my sodden eyes.