“Shine their shoes, boy.” Of ancient Ulm,
Or was it Hanover, or Vietnam news?

Whatever lives in a coptering leaves breeze flail
Burns, maybe, wrinkles over evening-orange contrails.

From ‘75, with backpack, an American teen.
You lay in a blanket that’s jungle green.

Born of tension, your luggage weared
Containing the last, probably-more, hundred years.

Pressured under coupled oceans that wash
Pepper, in the coasts, of gunpowder shells.

Every bit, godless, and landless there tread
Which is historically typical of a golden head.

You wait, with a significant loss in sheen
While much younger shoes uncover you from the rain.

“My, what a piece of ancient Ulm! It sits
Only in mud! Yet, what of the rest?

Whatever hasn’t yet lost its old meaning
That shining truth which, before, kept it going!”

Glossy, in all youth, in all sorts of sweat,
Heeded a call to consult with a death.

This set-on, and scattered, and ducked into flight
Mind unconsidered so decades might march out of sight.

Lo, quiet perforce a deep trench, or its field
Moving, not across that diptych unperturbed

Every hole through the air punctuates, shreds
The almost-last scream of a now golden head.

You run, run, run, run. Count how many feet touch the mound.
You envision how best you could look underground-

“Now, see: pressed up against its own shoes,
This thing of gold, it’s deformed and bruised!

Wherever we bore— past some trees, down a road;
Far from Ulm— we made a hole which, in it, erodes.”

Grisly, but plaqued, and so, covered up
The very remnants that resulted its death

From long ago, “This- It’s ancient!” some people say
Shipped back with laurel shawl now as its display

“Perhaps you are ageless wrapped in the old war.
Yes, tatters coming back are worth all the more.

Maybe, yes it was sent through so much wreck.
Before, far back it was born of some thread.”

“Shine its throne, man.” Of ancient blood.
That, on his deathbed is a golden head.