I found an arrowhead,
And I tied it around my neck
As a symbol of power and strength,
A memory of the endless wars
And a message to myself and others
That I still remember the ancient art.
Not really.
It was a trinket tied with leather
That I found in a gift shop.
And I thought that it looked cool.
I wore it to school the next day
And my friends thought that it was cool,
So I kept on wearing it through my youth.
I wore it on graduation day,
And I wore it when I went away a soldiering.
And that did not go so well for me.
But we won the war and I came home
With the arrowhead still hanging around my neck.
And when I did, I found another war waiting,
The war to make a life and living
As a broken combat vet.
And that didn’t go so well for me.
I married once. I married twice. I married once again.
And all the while, I wore the arrowhead.
The leather wore out several times
And I replaced it.
But I never threw it away. I don’t know why.
I lived alone in my late forties and thereafter.
I slept in abandoned cars.
I slept in tents in the woods.
People would have said that I was homeless
But I was not. Just unable, unwilling,
I’m not sure which,
To try at a losing game.
And I drank a lot. That started with the war
And continued throughout the losing battle of my life.
And I was never able to connect with people very well,
Wives and children, coworkers.
Even my siblings, we were close when I was young,
But things were different after the war.
And by the time I was fifty, they didn’t recognize me.
To be honest I didn’t recognize myself.
But I’m not so sure I cared.
I lived a long time that way before I got help.
And I have never really gotten better.
But with the help of a higher power, I sobered up.
And when I did, I let myself remember,
Not everything, that’d be too much,
But the good things,
Particularly the people that I loved.
And even now, they stand out in my memory
With amber light around.
And I think that I am at peace with what I’ve lost
And hopeful for the thing that I have found.
And today, the winter light is bright out on the desert.
I untie the arrowhead from my neck
And hike as far as I can manage.
I dig a hole and drop the old arrowhead in,
Cover it up and tamp it down.
And then I make my way back home.
And I am not sure why I did that.
It was a trinket, bought in a gift shop.
And I’m not sure why I wore it for so long.
But now that it’s gone, I feel strangely lighter,
And the future is bright before me.
And that is a strange thing
For an old man like me to feel.
