A tuna sandwich in wax paper,
Neat fold, no tuna spilling ….
And two boys, who also skipped
For early-season deer hunting.
Told me he was dead ….
And I thought, “tuna sandwich.”
He’d said his mother always
Made tuna sandwiches on white bread
For school lunches,
So when skipped for the hunting ritual,
He had to have a tuna sandwich (she thought he was going to school)
In his jacket pocket when he slipped on
New snow, got tangled in barbed wire,
And his rifle trigger snapped –
Gut shot – dead ….
Blood through shirt and jacket
Onto the snow,
Tuna sandwich flattened in
A side pocket as he fell –
And the woods and field stilled ….
Eugene “Gene” Novogrodsky, late December 2011
