Love in Wartime (III)
       

The teacher wanted a clearer starting place.

A map or else a mapping on.
Towns, green hills, a common vein of road.

Newspapers that spoke overtly
or else never spoke of war.

But in the poem's road
there was always something burning.

Petrol blue-smoked the borders
and no one was allowed out or in.

Somewhere a clot of tarmac singed
brightly like light through scrubby trees

and it was impossible to step from the median
without mouthing
                            minefield, lodestar, beautiful amputee—

Copyright © 2010 Elyse Fenton All rights reserved
from Clamor
Cleveland State University Poetry Center
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission