Broken

I remember when the
world about my head was
smaller than my
plastic khaki soldiers
and my bed,
and larger than
my city block of
pretty lawns and
tidy homes and
one of which within it
housed a patriot,
returned to us
from foreign conflict,
but not from fear.
Too harmed to rise from bed;
too scarred for false veneer
or pretty promises,
or condescending talk
upon the block to
little boys like me.

And what of harm and real
privation did I know?
My broken leg was healing,
and though would leave
a telltale limp,
a funny gimp
as afterthought,
the boyish horror wrought
of pain that day
would pass agley when
once the cast was placed.
My crutches had a role
to play in great adventure
round my school and
on the stairs, and
on the playground
I was cool,
and I was game,
racing with the able
as best I might with the
heavy wooden prop-ups
of the lame upright.

The soldier’s body down
the block would also heal
though less completely
than my own,
for his was of
a generation kin and past
a hundred years and more
and weary of the lasting
struggles I had never known,
and he bore them
without shame; and I am
ever sad to say
when he was called,
I never knew his name.