It is evening here in Afghanistan
            Sunlight slides over earthen HESCOES
            Slants across the tent flap
            Muttering in the wind like rain
            Absent for the last 70 days.
            Olive drab becomes aqua marine.
            An old dog, its fur like the floor mat
            Of my old Pinto clinging to ribs
            Like it has no place left to go
            Roots for any last vestiges
            It can find in a number ten can
            The mess Sergeant has left for it.
            As he sits, smokes, and sweats in his shirt;
            The rings of perspiration expanding
            Like ripples in a pond, he wonders
            With four body bags on the tarmac
            Awaiting their final flight home,
            Who would mourn the death of a dog?
            Still, he throws it scraps of steak it snaps up,
            Tuffs of fur fly in the wind, mange.
            Surgeon says this particular type
            Can transfer to humans.
            We have orders to shoot them.
            The only time the Marines and RRD boys
            Will voluntarily get together
            As the sun rolls over the Hindu Kush
            Ranging old dogs in Leopold scopes
            Since they can no longer shoot Afghani goats.
            They sit cross legged with cans of coke
            Sweating beside them on the HESCOES
            Killing what they probably played with as kids.
            They laugh as one is spun around and yelps.
            The carcasses seem to go flat in the heat
            Jerkied on the shoulder of the runway
            Fur fluttering like a memory of rain
            Taunting like the Marines,
            "One shot, one kill Motherfucker!"s.

Copyright © Richard Ostrander, 2006. All Rights Reserved.