Bay windows shimmer where he stands
on a picture perfect afternoon
framed in flashpoints of sunlight
he is desperately in search of cover

across the living room she glowed
exulted in his safe return
however unsteady his direction
back in the world, walking point
from kitchen to backyard barbecue

thick carpet, forest green
obliterates their teakwood floor
disguises her barefoot steps
as she glides through the rainforest
blanketed in pink-foamed mist

she peers around rubber trees
charred and leaking, slips closer
to the man's shadow at bay
this picture perfect afternoon

smiling with the innocence of a wife
whose home has never been napalmed
the woman pads softly past a bamboo table
with its porcelain vase of bougainvillea
through the rice paddies flooding the carpet

deep in country now
the man feels her reaching across
and turns just in time
to rescue her from friendly fire
his face a Magritte landscape in disarray.

"The Assassin" was written around 1999, although the incident which inspired it occurred years earlier, in another war.  This poem may be found in the book WORD DANCING. 

(c) 1999 Jeanne Powell