[SAMWolf]

SHARDS



On guard one night
Beside a dug-in fifty,
Routine firing in the distance,
Tracers arcing on the horizon,
I witnessed in the snowy field
Beneath a gibbous moon
The wild dancing of rabbits.

Days of steady rain
Washed away the enshrouding snow,
And in the field and woods
December’s dead
Came up like wildflowers.

The dead German
Lay on his back
In the muddy ditch
One arm skyward
As though in supplication –
A jokester wire man
Had lain a phone line
Through the fingers
Of the reaching hand.

Entering the crosscut town,
Which on a whim the lumbering colonel
Had not let us shell,
We were greeted
By his corded dead.

Beside the road,
Where it had been caught
By a strafing fighter
Was a burned out German gasoline truck.
Thirty yards away
Burned lobster-red,
Lay two bodies.
I felt blessed
Not to have witnessed
Them fleeing
Aflame and screaming.

Gerald E. Swartz

[Soaring Feather]

Shards.

My goodness, this poem made me see so clearly the horrible scenes war brings.
Often I write about shards the sharp pieces that stab and bite a memory reflected in ones mind.

I call my place The Attic, and from it comes Attic Rain filled with shards and shadows, haunting scenes from the past.

[snippy_about_it]

This was difficult to say the least, the poem and the picture.