Night Candles, and: Remembering David, and: Very Lights

Night Candles August, 1914

Mother says we've got to get some sleepbut Lu's still barking in the stable, stubbornpunky dog, locked in the empty box stall.She wants out. She wants to tag tail Terranceto the train station, ride with him beyondNorth Foreland and Calais, sleeping in hislocker box. Let loose, I'll bet she'd flush outthe Prussian spies, nip Fritz's heels all the wayback to Berlin, and if the Kaiser doesn'trun from her tiny skull-chipping yips, he'lldie from lack of sleep. Closing my eyes I seefields of other children's brothers lined upjust like Terrance, dressed in khaki, watchingfor the train so intently they can't see

us waving. Never mind, Mother says, he'llbe back home by New Year's. Suzanne's promisedto show me how to listen to the tracks,to hold my ears close to the steel railsto hear the guns in France when they go off.Shut up, Lu! The night candles flickerin their water-filled saucers, streaking my bedroomwalls the way light sideslips the movie palace screenbefore the cinematograph begins,swirled smudges turning numbers jumbled,shapeless flecks furrowing the fabric stage,the way the sea moves just before somethingbig begins to slowly rise from deep belowand I refuse to close my eyes.

Remembering David Ypres, 1917

His cries dismayed the new sisters. Againstmy wishes, Suzanne held his head, knelt downtoo close, to cut the shards of his burned jacketfree. Blistered skin ripped with the cloth and whatwasn't singed was yellow. What did we know?We'd never seen gas before. There wasn't timeto register his name—David, penciledon torn paper pinned to his cuff—or hisage, young boy's body reduced to agony. I tookover, praying he'd be the last like this we'd ever seeand told Suzanne to shower, change her clothes

immediately. I couldn't really touchhim so completely writhed the tent. Pain filled.Tears are just one of mustard's talents. Rinsinghim, I imagined holding the one Michelangelodreamed of, desiring someone whole, unharmedand still. Through gritting eyes I thought I sawthe cost of working tons of pure white stoneinto breathing bodies, wild for the belovedjust out of sight. That first night we almost losthim. Christ, what price beauty? Birth? What price thesemilling thighs, sloughing eyes, cruciferae's

dark oil glistening as far as the front stretches and farther.Orders from above—what does that mean?I won't forget him. His burns. Morphia blessed,he died the second day. Then came the othersstaggering, crawling, carried, blinded, blistered,balmless, emptying our pharmacy. Stained, my sisterssoaked themselves unknowingly, hunching overcots, desperately stripping, sponging. Within hoursnone of us could breathe. Eyes and noses running, hairgreige, skin bleached dull sulfur from the insideout. Whose work, this? Dazed, we kept on nursing.

Very Lights Longemarck, 1917

I see their eyes blink in short, sharp flashesfacing the valley's absence of itself, sunrecalled as memory singing the eyelids'

plush dark drapes. No two stunts the same. Conjured brilliancedissolving yellow, blue silhouettes of colleaguesoutlined—slowly—moving out of sight, even as

the eye strains to make them stay. Haloed marksetched into darkness so deep it feels solid.As if I could reach out my palms and press against

weightlessness. As if a man, surprised by his ownlightness, trying to stand up, swayed betweenmy hands vertically, his body begging any

one to hold him straight and safe. A sort of prayer,limb-thrashed, thrown aimlessly, air-frantic, last minutepitch I happen to receive. There, there, I say, I'm

here, it's okay. Perhaps he won't remember—let's hope, dear God—how many times I've mouthed these same

bright words as he goes down, falling without wordsdown into what I dream is gracious darkness, whole,wide...