In said poem County shows us the formal elegance which is possible in, and perhaps exclusive to free verse.

There is nothing so succumbing as a wound.
When placed with skill the words fall harmless,

Speak the expectancy of a toddler
Unaware a shot has been fired. Rifle

The two first couplets contrast "wound" and "harmless," forming a sort of reverse rhyme, which is echoed by the second stanza's "toddler" and "Rifle." At which point is the fulcrum of the poem whereby the lovely enjambment of "Rifle" interacts with its own line "Unaware a shot has been fired," but is masterfully disarmed with the "Through the past for bullets." Thus the meaning of "Rifle" flickers between noun and verb, so charged by its object, "bullets."

Through the past for bullets that graze the
Hair on your arms, then speak softly into a radio

Words that sooth people you have not met, climaxes
To lesser scenes in your happy drama.

A similar pattern of an enjambed end word which is acted upon be the preceding line occurs in the penultimate stanza where we have "climaxes," sexualized by "Words that sooth people you have not met," but subsequently neutered by the "To lesser scenes in your happy drama."

My head, your heart, knocked together to
Create bulletproof stars.

The head and the heart (both presumably hard objects) are struck together in the last couplet, producing "bulletproof stars." An absolutely stunning ending following the bullets loosed in the previous lines. The stars are impervious to the wounding elements described prior, but still are the locus of a hurtful act, the collision of the head and the heart, whereby one sees stars. The last word of the first line "wounds" and the last word of the last line "stars" form a neat and charged parenthesis for the poem, the wounds become stars and the stars wounds through a sort of mirroring process, echoed by the largely symmetrical nature of the poem which is arranged around the central axis of "bullets that graze/ The hair of your arm."

Hats off to Mr. County for a "keeper." (No hat pun intended, Mike).