Taking Care of Insects At Sea

The battle raged on, the artist uninjured, but soaked in blood, The dead and dying, cursed by good aim they still feel. The valley split by the cool of water…and a crimson mud The noise of the pain outweighing the wielding of steel. There were no more threads to sew, the material wastefully torn. No more linen to lay on mortal wound and gall, The saws blunt, the scalpels deader than the fallen, The horror of man ‘gainst man, pride before their individual fall. The other helpers in the task, saw not Dioscorides pale, Step back from the still cooling form before him, and slowly stroll Towards the hillside peak, clothed in green veil, A journey to another place, forgetting life lost, and clotting on his sole. The smell of desecration, and the noise of conflict, abated As he crested the hill and waded across the stage. The sun slowly setting, the grass beginning to wave, fated. The trees whispering, his thoughts clearing from the rage. His vista escape from the scene unreal, and sad, An accident of a creator wanting to flee. A journey of discovery, a dream to be had, Revealed a singular white kermes coated tree. He would leave here in a short time, never to re-appear, Where peace replaced the hate on the other side of the glen. He would remember, and with a vision clear, on canvas reinact the fear Of the boys drowning in the cochineal river, never to grow to be men. ( Based on the life of Pedanius Dioscorides...a soldier, physician and artist...this poem is based on his walking away from a battle where he was the surgeon, and discovering the kermes beetle on a cactus, and which he took some home to Greece...The beetle is the same one where we obtain cochineal for red food colouring.. )