Human Terrain.

Ritterbusch, Dale

--And in an instant, suddenly, you will be visited ... with thunder and with earthquake and great noise, with whirlwind and tempest, and the flame of a devouring fire. Isaiah 28:6

 Human Terrain
    The proper translation
   isn't All is vanity though
   such is found everywhere--
   belief in hegemony among nations,
   the necessity of imposing one's hegemonic will:
   consider my neighbor manicuring his lawn,
   a pungent odor of fertilizer, herbicide,
   permeates my clothes as it wafts through
   the window. I can't concentrate
   even on the silliest TV; I think of stiff,
   impregnated uniforms harder than starch,
   bulwark against VX, GB, HD, and laugh
   wishing I had my old protective mask.
   My neighbor bends over, stiffly, slowly,
   presses a multitude of small signs
   into the grass, signs required by law
   warning, Danger! Herbicide & Pesticide
   Application: Do Not Walk or Play
   on the Lawn. No, the proper translation
   I'm told, explained by a studious seminarian
   who almost took his vows but quit
   choosing a secular life instead,
   reads All is pfff, a sound like the last breath
   of air pressed from a bicycle tube
   as it's compressed when removed from the rim,
   the sound of everything, one time or another,
   like the theory of everything, this the sound,
   everything vanishing, pfff, the sound we've all heard
   taking our breath away, present always,
   background noise to the cosmos as evidenced
   when the Religious Program Specialist--
   what used to be called a Chaplain's Assistant--
   tells me of being on patrol, long hours
   penetrating deep through stone portals,
   along rock ledges, landscape of scarf and scree
   treacherous as any promise made
   by faithful and infidel alike. A soldier
   stops, kneels and pfff, gone, vanished,
   all ears ringing in the silent rain
   of dust, blood dry as rock and sand,
   as a pebble placed in one's dry, cottony mouth
   to cure a desiccated tongue
   to allow speech, but there is none,
   all vanished in the heat of vaporization
   as he saw his Christian friend
   disappear, an IED that could slash
   and gut a Humvee,
   turned just at that moment
   to see him kneel and pfff
   nothing left because all is vanity,
   and what stays is the nothing that is there
   and is not there; his face recedes, his name,
   not even a replacement because time is short
   and the mission, the prayer, pfff,
   an image not an image staying
   and staying because where else the scripture
   that explains pfff ... pfff ... pfff. 

DALE RITTERBUSCH is the author of Lessons Learned: Poetry of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath and Far From the Temple of Heaven. He twice served as Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English & Fine Arts at the United States Air Force Academy.