Beyond Welcome Home

By Beth Liechti

upstairs where few footsteps stray
in a narrow bedroom
beyond welcome home
fragments tread
knotty pine walls
witness to faded moments

down range in the desert
on duty zero five to twenty-two hundred
raw local water churning gut
stiff words boiling over
now and then a charlie foxtrot grin
flickers above a chinstrap

bang back in the world
standing guard
staring at a walnut dressing table
passed thru many second hands
littered with baubles
bygone brouhaha

on the corner of the oversized
speckled looking glass
flung haphazardly
perched and paralyzed
hangs a maroon beret
trimmed in black and dirt sweat

lit up by late day sun
choking with dust
its once meticulously defined crease
sacrificed and kinda lost 
in forgotton folds
of hard worn felt

****

Beth Liechti. Bareback, she spins her blood-red Arab stallion on his heels and bolts into a gallop across the plains, breasts heaving and wind ripping through her mane of tawny ringlets. Her laughter echoes off hazy, purple mountain peaks. Scribbler, seasoned editor, US Army veteran (Cold War through Opn Iraqi Freedom). Creator of “Launch Your Light: Why Journal in the 21st Century?” Her stories and poetry have been published in Sisters in Arms: Lessons We’ve Learned (anthology Blue Dragon Press), As You Were (Military Experience and the Arts), Line of Advance, Mighty Pen Project Anthology, and the Cactus Wren-dition.