Let the peaceful young men work
their bis and tris.
Let’s not begrudge
them their beach muscle.
This is not bitterness. Please, let them
never imagine their Clean and Press
is a casualty raised
up and over
a Humvee’s up-armor.
Let them never know a body
weighs more unconscious
or consider that barbells are built
to be lifted, our bodies
to lie down.
Today I can deadlift four-oh-five.
When I can move four-ten
that will not stop a bullet
or
the overpressure of a bomb
flooding some tightened space,
never mind
the shrapnel and heat careening
through that rapid bloat
ripping—
But if lifting is not a prayer
why do my knees hurt?
Why lunge genuflections
in fifty-yard intervals
if not to make less fragile these legs
I beg to keep?
If the consecration of chalk buckets
is not a blessing
then the measured
tearing down of my tissue, the shallow
scarring of its muscle,
is not teaching this body reverence
to whatever
is in it that tells it—cohere.
But I say this is faith,
I am learning
to tighten myself together
and knowing
the little good it will do.
Let the peaceful young men believe
for awhile longer
anything otherwise.
