DREAM OF THE DISAPPEARED
Argentina, 1977
His death I dream;
his death I sleep,
falling naked
through hundreds
of feet of air,
hitting the water,
splashing against
its surface,
water raining
back down
on me
as I sink
deeper and deeper
into the ocean,
another one
of the disappeared.
I was not a young boy
tossing rocks I had collected
over the side of a bridge
into a creek,
I was a man, a soldier,
following orders,
and he was nothing, a rebel,
bones and blood, drugged,
stripped of clothing,
pushed from a plane
at 1300 feet,
still alive,
still the enemy,
drowning in the Atlantic,
drowning in my dreams,
my sleep,
where I can no longer
disappear.
—from Rattle #20, Winter 2003