Soldiering

A gun on either side of me, a pond
with blood and foam, shit and corpses in it;
among the lily's pads, empty boxes
of bullets, bandages and processed food;
a quiet made up of too much blantant sound,
grass and weeds smashed by up-to-the-minute
shards of metal riven to find the fox's
hole I dug to do some transient good.

It is morning in her bedroom, soon she'll
dress and wander to her coffee, safe as sun,
while I huddle beneath a canopy
of shells, not sea shells, not the bursting shells
of peas, just chunks of murder left undone.
War is mere death, love made a man me.

Copyright © 2003 Daniel J. Langton All rights reserved
from Margie
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission