The Country of War: A Poem

This is a poem to be read while thinking about going to war to stop a war. 

The Country of War

War comes down
like a hammer, 
heavy and hard,
flattening the earth 

scorching it
as though a hot iron 
had been taken to it,

killing the soft things: 
children and horses
love and hope

killing the good 
of the earth,
the coolness 
of its creeks,
the look of trees 
uncurling
their leaves 
in late March 
or early April.

You smell 
this country
before you see it.

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The above poem is an early draft of a much longer poem that eventually was called "Landscape with Dead Horses."  It appears in my book Echoes of Tattered Tongues.