place

at valley forge the cannons wake up dazed.
roam alongside the deer that are eating 
each other's ribs.
the winter has enough sadness
for all of us. they look at their reflections
in the pools of half-frozen water. remember
the memory of a child turned
into ammunition. how they swallowed the skulls
& spat them out. though truly
they are just replicas or else grave markers.
massacre is this country's greatest love. 
the cannons saunter the woods & imagine themselves
living as animals. long deeply to die 
like the deer die. withering until
they are nothing but the sounds
of wind chimes. there was no battle
at valley forge. instead, there was 
a little nest of lost empires. they wrote letters
to their empty gods. fed them to one another.
mouths open. hungry as hunger 
would allow. the creases of the land.
the cannons now wondering if 
there is a story that could be told about them
in which they are not the ending. in which
they do not spit punctuations 
across the hillsides. they hear the snow coming
before anyone else. huddle together
pretending to be pack animals.
one cannon says to the other,
"i wish i was a house" & another asks,
"do you think it is too late 
for me to learn how to be the wind?"