Lost Eyes
- for mom 

I want to account for the flower
in your hair. Let’s call it hibiscus,
pink, though the snapshot in my hands, 
your hindsight son, is black and
white -- you and your date, six other 
couples, round the restaurant table.  
Here’s my vision of how you 
you arrive at that moment, how
how the flower’s procured, placed  
in your hair. In my gloss-you ,
you ascend the train station stairs,
emerge onto the park. It’s early yet, 
an August evening. Your neck curls
lie damp, limp in waning heat.
The young soldier too has time to kill, 
his troop train to lumber north --
Camp McCoy, war maneuvers, in a
matter of hours. Absent his buddies, 
privately shy, politely lost in his soft
Nebraska twang; how he puts words
together -- different than the polyglot 
phrases slung across Chi-town lunch
counters you waitress. You have a
minute or two; provide a sense of  
place, orientation, and ask if he'd
like an Italian ice from the curbside 
pushcart. The crystal mound glitters 
in an afternoon sun that squats over 
Michigan Avenue’s terra cotta 
showpieces. Let’s say he’s not  
told you his name nor you, yours. You’re
content when his lost eyes soften as ice 
shavings slide into the glass bowl; join  
crushed peaches and sugar spooned 
from a stone mortar. I think to have 
this boy soldier buy the flower for you; 
how its fragrance recalls the flowers that
flank his mother’s vegetable plot just beyond
Omaha. How your kindness summons hers.