No money, no ID, no idea

 I dozed a bit on the afternoon train
from Ulm to Regensburg. 

Woke up just in time to scramble off

and watch the train leave the station.

And discovered that my wallet

had departed with it. With my money,

my Army ID, the phone numbers

and addresses of the new friends

I was going to visit for the first time

in a town I’d never been to.

All I knew was that it was somewhere outside

or near Regensburg, but the name of which

little town or village it was I couldn’t remember.

I should have paid more attention.

That’s what the scrap of paper with their phone

numbers and addresses was for. To call them.

I had a few coins, enough to call information.

But I only knew their first names: Dieter and Ralf.

Obviously not enough to get a number

from the operator, though she was kind.

I walked out of the city, hoping it was

in the right direction. Probably wasn’t.

The sun went down and I hadn’t reached

a town or village so I found a place to sleep

under a bridge over a small, cold stream.

When I woke up the next morning,

my eyes were crusty, sore, and swollen.

I dipped my handkerchief in the stream and rinsed

some of the burn out of my itching eyes.

Began the long hitchhike back to the base in Ulm.

The rides were short, infrequent, just village to village,

I wasn’t going to make it back that day.

The last one dropped me off near midnight

in the middle of a small city. The name

on the sign at the edge of town was Dachau.

No people on the tree-lined streets. No cars,

no open restaurants or bars. Just clouds

of moths fluttering under lone street lamps.

Not that I wanted to linger, I kept walking until I was

well outside of town into the black moonless countryside.

Looking for a place to curl up in my thrift store raincoat.

I walked out into a dark field. The ground was soft,

freshly plowed, but even in the dim light of our

milky galaxy, I could see pale white specks in the soil.

I told myself that surely those are not the cremated remains

of the people murdered at the concentration camp.

But it felt like they were. Like their icy breath

on the back of my neck. I shivered and turned

back towards the road, stumbled out of the field.

Walked until the night felt warm as a summer night

in June was supposed to be. I passed a rat the size

of a cocker spaniel walking along the shoulder of the road.

I kept on walking, beyond the icy breath of the dead.

I don’t remember much about the place I found

to rest that night. There were trees. And grass.