Bayonets

The grey sky outside seems oddly comforting today. My fire escape cuts a sharp, blackened silhouette against its iron-like visage, worthy of any modern art wannabe I’m listening to Ken Burns wax lyrical about the horrors of the Civil War. The bayonet charge ended with that war, apparently. A convention of death rendered obsolete I wonder what it must have felt like, shaking, staring at the savage tip of the steel, ready to plunge. Was it dull and grey like this sky? Or as sharp and piercing as the Sun? They were just boys Green tea, slippers and a cigarette are my comrades in arms today And we shall revive the bayonet charge into unknown Tomorrow, unheeded and silent as the clouds.