Brotherhood, friendship, loss and love transcend the violence of combat. Poetry gives us both ends of the human condition: the softest of words for the hardest of truths. This book follows in the literary tradition of Wilfred Owen, Rudyard Kipling, Michael Herr and Tim O'Brien. Rubicon delves into the passions of fighting men, and asks us to understand one another by looking inside ourselves. Stanton S. Coerr has been published around the world on topics of combat, national security, international relations and insurgency, and is a graduate of both Duke and Harvard. He is a Marine combat veteran of the war in Iraq, and is the father of three boys. This is his first published work of poetry.