Iraq War Grief Daily Witness (photo) Day 231

this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters

we honor courage in all its forms

cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.

image and poem below the fold

In a photo provided by family Army Pfc. Peter D. Wagler, 18, who was assigned to the 1st Batallion, 12th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team stationed at Fort Hood, Texas is shown. He served with the Multi-National Division in Baghdad. Wagler died from injuries sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle in Iraq on Monday, Jan. 23, 2006.
(AP Photo/The Hutchinson News, via Wagler family)

Footprints
by Parker Towle

mark the fine red sand beside the trail: a man’s
shoe, horse’s hooves, a paw. Navaho
sandstone looms four hundred feet
to either side streaked white by sea stones,
not snow, striated like sacks of old coins
pocked as with claw prints of quaint
cretaceous birds.
A partridge flushes through
pale blue sage brush. Shadow strikes my face
like a blade of ice. Close to a canyon wall
the stone abrades my fingertips.
A chipmunk
leaves a puff of dust across my path. I turn
back through black volcanic caves, lose
my way for a moment, hum, “All
through the Night,” over and over, hear
bubbling water deep beneath my feet,
enter my history, inscriptions
in the sand.