War Is Raw

Betsy Joseph

March 21, 2022

War is raw, he told me,

especially in beautiful places—

during the mist of early sunrise,

during a sweet burst of birdsong

which can take one’s breath away

just as suddenly as mortar shells

can still that same breath.

War is raw, he confessed,

when you have to bend low

as a Huey dips and hovers

to retrieve the injured bodies

you had just worked on,

and you remain to work on others

when you’d rather climb aboard

with your deep psychic wounds.

War is raw, he confided,

when you learn that those fine droplets

from that “helpful defoliant” 

are a chemical, a different enemy 

arriving sometime later and unexpectedly

to soldiers, villagers, and future children alike.

War is raw, he concluded.

The gentle artist he once had been

before the draft claimed him in ’72 

returned him to the US, depleted, in ’73.

Bold colors and broad angry strokes

soon replaced the soft charcoal study

of his girlfriend’s graceful hands.

Betsy Joseph, a retired English professor, lives in Dallas and has poems that have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies. Her poetry collection, Only So Many Autumns, was published by Lamar University Literary Press in 2019. Lamar is also publishing her forthcoming book, Relatively Speaking: Poems of Person and Place, a collaborative collection of poetry with her brother and poet Chip Dameron. In addition, she and her husband, photographer Bruce Jordan, have produced two books, Benches and Lighthouses, which pair her haiku with his black and white photography.