Echo Tango Poem by Linda Marie Van Tassell

Darkness drapes his body like a flag
as he drifts between sandbars of sleep,
his head nestled on a rucksack bag,
his rifle ready and in his keep.

He is a stranger in a strange land
of ancient tongues, conviction, and stone
whose devotion warms the desert sand
and is recited in blood and bone.

He tows the weight of hope in his heart
like the fragments of a fallen star,
dreaming of those from whom he’s apart,
who are very near; and yet, so far.

A world of peace blossoms in his head
between the shoulders of day and night.
He raises the crosses of the dead
who bit the bullet and shattered light.

The wave of the brave is in his hair
spilling beyond the Caspian Sea
mingling with dust and light as air
as whispers of wind that set it free.

He sleeps with Shula beneath the sky
nestled against the curve of her spine,
with dreams of home in back of his eye
pressed like grapes into vessels of wine.

Darkness drapes his body like a flag,
like the flag that will drape his coffin,
as one more dream in a body bag
dies the death that approaches often.