Foxholes   When the time was right he told us about the war — boredom, fear, and loneliness most of the time, then terror and noise, the shouting, screaming, the pop and heave of guns, ghost moments that never go away and things that cannot be unseen. That’s where I found God, he said — where I found love, and the sting of knowing what love means, how we’re all wounded and scared, doomed but still alive — alive! He told us about foxholes and bargains with fate, grasping for anything to drive away the onrush of death, make the pain stop, hush the noise. And I’m still in that war, still in that foxhole, he said — we all are.                                                                  — for W.W.     © Michael Fleming Brattleboro, Vermont June 2019