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Contests : War Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2006 : John McBride
NIGHT GREYHOUND
Miles cannot measure where the heart goes
over these Dakota badlands
and flat Montana plains
in rain and night—
Across the aisle, a young soldier
going to his post
tosses aside his magazine,
stretches uncomfortably,
aching to sleep. His uniform,
crumbling out of neatness,
becomes the winding sheet
for the gun of his soul,
which he cannot set aside
in this vast geography,
nor even in exchange for it—
What will withstand
its mechanical ignorance?
Let his hardening innocence be
all that he needs tonight,
his shield between him and it
hurtling toward him in the darkness—
shattering as the tracer-white lightning
now at our streaming windows...
The startling light of a future perfect,
not the past, buries more dead.
And now he is asleep, and I am drifting off,
dreaming how quietly he'll go where he is taken,
with his home town paper, his letters,
his furlough of memories...
# # #
It is early morning, the storm passes,
the bus picks up speed, and he still sleeps,
his crisp shirt and tie in place,
his one thin hand across his green blouse,
as though he knows we bear him to Avalon,
bear him silently across
a sleeping, nearly immobile land
but for this thin smoke from a distant ranch,
their animals looking glumly out at us from the fence,
and the wild small animals alert beside the road,
who watch our wheels.
This poem was a finalist in the 2006 War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About John McBride
I was born and raised in Chicago, near Wrigley Field, and am thus fated to be a lifelong Cubs fan. After high school, I attended John Carroll University, Cleveland, Ohio, on a drama scholarship, graduating in three years, magna cum laude, with a B.A. in English. I received a Ph. D. in English from the University of Illinois and held teaching and administrative positions at the Universities of Illinois, Michigan, and Iowa until I changed to the field of social work, earned a Masters of Social Work degree from the University of Iowa, and directed social service agencies. These included a rehabilitation program for prisoners, a home for runaway and homeless youth, and an emergency aid and referral agency. I also founded the Big Brothers/Big Sisters agency in our area.
I live now in Bettendorf, Iowa, on the Mississipi, with my wife, Nancy, who is still teaching. We have two grown children and two grandchildren. I volunteer at a local soup kitchen for the homeless and spend much of my time at the library, walking and jogging along the Mississippi, and writing, often in that order.
In recent years I have won poetry awards from The Christian Science Monitor, By-Lines, the Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest, the Loras College Writers Conference, Poets' Forum, The Poet's Page and 15 state poetry societies. I was a finalist in our area's poetry competition judged by Robert Pinsky, recent poet laureate of the US, and a semi-finalist for the 2003 Weldon Kees Award from Backwaters Press. I won the second place Founders Award in the 2004 competition of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies.
My poetry has appeared in Bardsong, the Big Muddy, The Christian Science Monitor, Common Threads, Julien's Journal, the Natchez Poetry Anthology, Out of Line, Poetry Motel, Peninsula Poets, Penumbra, Pioneer Press, the Outrider Press, the Daily Palette, + Fifty, Light, Off the Coast, Watermarks, the John Carroll Quarterly, the NeoVictorian/Cochlea, the Rockhurst Review, the Romantics Quarterly, and Lyrical Iowa. It has also been presented over the radio by WVIK, the PBS affiliate at Augustana College, Rock Island, IL.
I am the current president of our regional poetry society, the Quint City Poets, and a board member of the Midwest Writing Center in Davenport, Iowa. I co-edited the Midwest Writing Center's Out Loud Anthology of Poetry, 2006.
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