Hands

Hands reached out and grabbed my heels as I walked this once bloody field. They were just everyday hands, miners, carpenters, the hands of the butchers boy, the bank clerk, the sordid hands of the local Johnny no good. The tinker, the tailor, the poacher, all pressed for the glory of war, a glory lost in knee deep mud and indiscriminate lead. Where the Devil played poker with fate for the right of souls, the Ferryman busy that day. Before my feet the Poppies fall like men in sights at duties call, then and now the field turned red. I sit the depression where some cannon chewed, now overgrown with moss and memories. Whispers glide by me, idle banter, everyday chat, sport, sisters getting married, mothers worried, will anyone remember me, why. This muddy morass where men walked or ran, never realizing that death had its own pace. And yet every step was made of duty, glory forsaken as a lost cause, every step seen as one closer to home. How many names beneath this soil, how many stories feed these poppies, and how many dreams still lie bleeding. Walk the battlefields and you will feel those hands, the tinker, the tailor, the butcher boy