By Eva Rinaldi from Sydney Australia [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons

By John Kaufman

If war can be shed, if we can agree

to remove the uniform

for a day or an hour or even

a minute then whatever we said

we heroically wore unravels

as when one pulls a loose thread.

Because war is a shirt

stitched tight like a chain,

each building upon the other one’s pain,

someone must risk

letting go of the link, just one

anywhere, anyone

can, barehanded, begin.