Lamar Howell's Weblog

A few good men in ancient Babylon

Saving the world, a handful of sand at a time

(Even deserts deserve more than despots)

     Just yesterday they were running tractors through sandbox furrows

New men, whose  fathers made treadmarks in moondust

Now, with conquering boots

our heroes leave shifting marks on windswept dunes

     We hear their distant footsteps

echoing in our hearts

crunching and crushing against our souls

matching every pulse of the human clock

     Our inner pendulum stops 

as we wait between breaths

for our sons to come in from the sandbox

eight thousand miles away 

But the hourglass is an uncertain size

its center painfully narrow

Sand trickles one grain at a time

into their boots

and down the hourglass we embrace 

     Here on the porch swing of America

we gaze at the moon

and strain for the print of Neil Armstrong’s boot