Fields of France are filled with blood-red poppies
Where also bloom the lily-white crosses:
Each buried youth a seed, now bursting forth
Into a stark white cruciform flower:
Row upon row, rank after serried rank,
A spiky grid overlying acre
After acre in silent panoply,
Swan-mute as stillborns, yet shrieking their pain.
A century has failed to lay their griefs.
But such gardens aren’t anywise unique.
On every continent, in every age,
The fields are sown: and so among the trees
And forests, steppes and prairies, cities
And wastelands, the precious seed is planted,
The harvest bitter in its barrenness.
Instead of poppies, palms or rank lianes,
Brush or tundra, timber, sedge or seaweed
Grow where crosses never got to flower:
Even those gaunt reminders are missing
To give their witness to the seed thus sown,
The sacrifice and sacred blood there spent.
And so it goes: so it’s been since people
First appeared. And will go on: tomorrow
And the day after, still the sowing will
Continue. Perhaps someday our wisdom
And compassion may grow enough to wean
Us of this savage, mindless husbandry:
Today, it seems a thousand years away.
Categories:
overlying, grave, loss, memorial day,
Form: Elegy
There's pressure within the atmosphere of earth.
With oxygen too heavy to breathe to much we would burst.
Satan's the mover of all those negative winds.
Thanks to Him. tornado winds of destruction.
This atmospheric pressure
got me down;
This atmospheric pressure
got me down;
My lungs hurt, cause the weight of the air is beyond my nose;
The wind is dancing with the rose;
It hurts;
There's mean sea level pressure.
An average atmospheric pressure at sea level;
Well where was Noel.
this atmospheric pressure got me down;
Overlying atmospheric mass pressure decreases;
In my increasing elevation
I am adjusting my life so much pressure;
The altimeter setting in aviation measure;
My lungs hurt cause the weight of the air is beyond my nose;
The wind is dancing with the rose;
It hurts;
Pressure within the atmosphere of earth.
Helps keep the clouds and rain in place.
I am adjusting my life so much pressure;
The altimeter setting in aviation measure;
Got me down, got me down;
Still in my increasing elevation
Tornado winds of destruction.
This atmospheric pressure
08/22/2017
Categories:
overlying, analogy, conflict, endurance, engagement,
Form: Free verse