Paul Willason Poet Free verse

Battlegrounds

Childhood crept through
those long summer days
when the smell of pine
hung in the hot air.
Deep in the shadows
of that besieged acre,
heaven and hell played
out a lethal game
in what crawled, wriggled
or took wing. Death there
was silent and cries
froze in gaping mouths.

Dragonflies patrolled
the boundary
like miniature demons
and in hollows,
mandibles gnawed
on nerves
until the last thread
snapped and let panic loose.
Gowned in finery,
other terrors waited
to welcome fleeing souls
with a fatal sting
or to paralyze the will
and render living flesh
food for offspring.

At night, screams
broke out
and blew across
battlegrounds
to tangle in the thickened
skeins of dreams.
Years on, all have
sunken deeper
and slurried
into a faceless fear.
There are times,
even now,
when you can hear
the sobs of those still
wandering the wastelands
of restless nights
whilst good people sleep.

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Jeff Kyser September 30, 2022 at 5:43 AM I read this on a couple of levels. Once, we slept in tents at a school that had been built on the 'killing fields' in the Gulu district of northern Uganda. That was a strange experience, meeting people who had been children in the LRA, but had broken free of it. But I also imagine a battle such as described occurring every single day, in the micro, in the woods and fields all around us, on the scale of the insects, as you described. Paul Willason September 30, 2022 at 5:44 PM Hi Jeff, Thanks for comments...thoughtful and indicates you dug into the poem. Does operate on two levels, natural world and the psychological. ...the latter bordering on the nightmare. Appreciate yr time in reading the poem and commenting. Kind regards, Paul