"This well-used little bag is just the right size / to carry a copy of the Psalms. It's plain-woven / flowers and helicopter share the sky with bombs" The internal rhyme of "Psalms" and "bombs" really foreshadows the juxtaposition of reality and ideals. The book bag being the holding prayers and from up above bombs.
"falling like turnips--he who makes light of other / men will be killed by a turnip." The poem becomes a bit farcical here, but if someone dies because of their ideals, aren't they killed because of them? If someone sees bombs as turnips, bombs are still bombs no matter the perceptions.
"A bachelor. / I wear it across my shoulder--it's easier to be / a bachelor all my life than a widow for a day." To forgo any search of love because eventually you'll be a widow is a grim reality. But again this is the reality versus the ideal. It'd be great to fall in love, but reality, the speaker could die at any second.
On the bags face, two black shapes appear
to be crows--be guided by the crow and you
will come to a body-- though they are
military aircraft.
The bag turns into a mystic crow guide, but in reality it's a miliary aircraft. So the meaning and interpretation behind war is irrelevant to the reality of living in one -- one where they could be a possible widow or die by bombs from above. If someone still puts forth their ideals first before reality then, "A man who needs fire / will soon enough hold it in his hands."
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