An Argument To Just Leave the Arrow In
In a soldiers finest hour
I have found it to be true,
Life flashes before you,
In wake of billowing threat;
Unavoidable, like the fisherman’s net,
Yet no place deeper might I swim free.
In the dragging in, the waters of life flee about me.
The sun shone as I was thrown upon the boat
The isles of life and my own shores drifting remote;
Splendrous jewels beyond azure slopes.
My life an ebb of failing hopes.
Hold still brother, for there is fight in you yet!
I bit down upon the dagger hilt
And let the droning of war lilt.
My fellow pulled free the jutting arrow and vanished
And midst the last throbbing pangs, so too the world:
All the horrors of the field;
The clang of steel upon steel,
The thud of the dead
Falling lifeless to the muddy yield.
For death, the light was mellow
I spied through broken clouds a crying sun
A light rain pelted daisies
As I watched the rabbits run
Upon my gleaming sword;
Narrow sharp mirrors hilt’d upon the glade
Well'd in half orbs the drizzle and spray
Upon the shimmering blade
How odd the dying mind at play
My journey's end, but who's to say
How the stepping stones of man’s destiny
Are forth laid
The sun receded in a dour mood
And from Its brooding, a rain ensued
I spied a close by wood.
I rose to my feet;
Blade to hand
Then to sheath.
I spied my shield upon the heath.
My chest yet seem to heave with breath,
Mayhaps we've not transitioned yet,
Still, ‘twould be better we weren't wet.
Shield overhead, “To the wood!”, I swashed ahead
My wounds simply weren't
I happily learnt.
Yet for my fellow knight I yearnt'.
Does he hold my lifeless corpse
Are his tears this rain?
Do lightnings and thunders
Descend upon the war-torn plain?
Does his sword fell the foe in my vain,
With a vengeance unrestrained?
What shallow hopes are these,
War and shatter’d pride’s vengeful fantasies?
We have much to learn
And should to the face of humility turn
And beg pardon our arrogance,
Even in death.
For, but moments ago
War was our breath
And the death of our common foe,
Our purposed life!
Are all our struggles so empty and rife,
With imagined statehoods and allegiant prides.
What meanings these dividing lines;
Borders between, where learned hate divides,
And the use of truth and virtues
To prop up lies
So that we, each of us, when he dies
Has much to answer for, before
The Almighty's judging eyes.
He will see that we will have failed,
I surmise
To live up to the honor
For which we stood and died
A dog-eared page in the annals of yore
No historian would suffer for
And less, learn from,
Nor ring silent harrowing knells of war
Now stops the downpour
Just as I've reached these ever- green canopies
lost midst the stirrings of dire truths and ironies
Where I go from here isn't clear
But lo, the sun is shining
The skies are clear
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