What We Could Not Write, and: Pilot's Window

What We Could Not Write

We are warned not to write
    about the news, so I can't
say anything about the hazing
    of recruits who have earned

their jump pins, by jumping
    out of planes and floating
down to earth, and now stand
    in a squad in front of a wall,

where they are pummeled
    by their veteran drunk
instructors, who punch their
    medals into their chest flesh,

until there is an earned, open
    wound they are told makes
them braver than us, the other men,
    who didn't know what we

would see tonight when we
    watched the news, when we
were told what we couldn't
    say and what we could not write.

Pilot's Window

The pussy willow buds shed
    their velvet, their rabbit fur,
and each hair is now a stem

    top-heavy with the dust of pollen
and a bee who has found its first
    spring flower to farm.

If I've ever heard a bush sing
    before, this is it, although
its song is the humming siren

    of evacuation, its yellow tips
being carried away.
    Even within range of being

stung, I want to say to the bees
Don't get carried away,
as if they were the young

    terrorists the world sees
drop another body
    onto the airport's hostage cement.

That's my fate I think,
    walking back from the garden,
my ears ringing, to see

    death on the wings
of the nearest bee.
    And that I hope is theirs, too,

who hold guns to the ears
    of those who are flying
from one place to another -

    to see the bee landing
on the pilot's window, its
    legs loaded with gold

it wants to take home
    to its hive, where everything
it brings in must be changed.