War is waiting.
A soldier, boots-on-ground, now,
Waiting to be told, it is time now,
Time to move into a zone of fire,
And use his gun,
And try to stay alive.
His wife, in a house, in the middle
Of the night, a telephone ringing,
That sounds like the bugle they play
At military funerals, because she is here,
At home, waiting to be told, he is dead.
A child standing, there, a house of sand,
With a sheep, and a story, the story
You could never imagine, my husband
Tells me, that boy, waiting,
For the war to be over,
Even though,
He has never known anything else,
Or a child in America,
My child,
Sitting at a kitchen table,
Waiting,
Waiting ten more months,
For his father to come home.
