Armies and Orchids - a new poem by Linda Larson

Armies and Orchids

The little white posts
Stuck in the soil
Markers naming the orchids
At the flower show

Mimic acres of white crosses
Sturdy and upright
Over bones as fragile as
Ruby’s Dragonfly.

Orchids, deceptive,
Feed only on air.
A rich man’s hobby
Nonetheless, crosses

Bedecked, celebrating holidays
With bright, cheerful flags waving
Hello from those consumed
In battle, at War Meister’s

Command, Nightfire,
Simple Pleasures, Shoot or be shot.
Origami cranes,
Piled high at Hiroshima

Truman’s trade off in lives,
The Emperor’s Saffron Delicacy,
Pacific fang,
Its unspeakable retort.

Babies caught in the
Tiger’s Jaw of history, spat out
In its grinding wheel as
Fossils of one century

Name a blood-spattered
Specimen after Rasputin
Sorcerer’s Kiss, and I
When my ship comes in

As one day it must
Will name a red as deep
As pockets left by Hellfire missiles
For Bush’s war, Soldiers’ Dust.

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