Operational Culture For The Warfighter Poem by Robert Ronnow

What would be the point, in this first winter snow, of
      going
back to several of the women whose bodies I have
      known
and wondering what they thought about all these
      intervening
years. Inevitably it is their children, illnesses and death.
Their art, their work, community. How their words
enter your ears and stay forever! Rib cage and knee.
How we lay on the beds in our youth and late afternoon
      light.

At no point will the snow and bare trees stop being
interesting to me. Seven loads of apples went into Jim
      Kelly's
cider press Saturday afternoon. A paragraph from
      Wendell
Berry's recent essay was read. Those who felt part of
      that place
were embraced. Fields of pumpkins, corn to the west
and east. But I remember winter nights hurrying under
elevated subway, Bronx. Alone, unknown, I did not
      exist.

The point being maybe now I don't exist anymore than in
      Afghanistan.
A land to be admired, like all lands. How lovely the
      harsh
mountains and deserts, indigenous plants and people,
      adapted
ungulates, carnivorous mammals. What is left of them
      after
10,000 years of human history. Much has been made of
      the snow
leopard, by Peter Mathiessen. The city of Kabul is
      understandable
using the very same analysis Jane Jacobs learned from
      New York City.

At this point I would have to overcome a deepening
      solitude,
the snow of it falling about my ears, to hear their cries
      and joys
and understand thanksgiving. Has my father gone to his
      grave
without saying his one essential thing? He has said it,
      said it
in war and in preparing boys for war, and in peace and
      his wife.
Have my lovers gone to their graves already or are they
      still
in life? I have heard a random, strange selection of their
      words.