Talking With Triggers

Talking With Triggers

Perched in a live oak

cloaked in moss

my uncle waited

for a deer, wild boar

or turkey,

while beneath him

two men idled

out of the brush

and argued.

Neither looked up.

A shotgun blast

from one blew

the other back.

A life soaked quickly

into the crispy

forest floor.

A sheriff brought

my uncle home,

ripped gaping holes

into the family

with verbal buckshot

and left with us

a loaded shell of doubt.

Six years later,

barely 21,

my uncle’s own life

was soaked up by sand

on a riverbed

in Southeast Asia.

Two of the men

who had been

in a Georgia forest

one fall afternoon

are now reduced

to piles of  lead

and bone. The shell

of doubt still rests

in the chamber.