The Awful, Awful Cost of War

PAD Challenge day 11:
For today’s prompt, write a description poem.
Pick someone or something to describe.
Get in depth, or just brush along the surface.


So our young men and women can go off to work...

and come home to mother's supper-soup...

Beneath your ribs

Pulses the heart

Of a boy,
A brother,

A mother’s son

But, instead of

A baseball bat

They are teaching you

How to hold a gun

And on your cheek,

Your smooth, young cheek

Instead of a kiss

From a sweetheart dear

You are about

To taste firsthand

The awful gall

Of mud-and-blood tear

And many of you

Will never see

The Freedom

You are fighting for

Your boyish vim and

Sympathy

The awful, awful

Cost of war

© Janet Martin

The Truth
by
Archibald Lampman

Remembering...

 It is Remembrance Day in Canada,
Veteran's Day in the USA

(Today we say our thank-yous
...each day may we live our Thank-yous)

Sometimes I forget

… I butter bread

And fill my head

With dreams and such

While offspring of

A soldier’s love

Makes uncommon,

Life’s common touch

…how those who fell

Loved, oh so well

The life of morrow’s

Girl and boy

And how the cost

Of what they lost

Pays for the freedom

We enjoy

*** 

Sometimes I forget

… I butter bread

And fill my head

With dreams and such

While offspring of

A Saviour’s love

Makes uncommon,

Life’s common touch

His blood-drops fell

To save from hell

The soul whose life

Will never cease

He bore the price

Of sacrifice

To pay for freedom

We call Peace

© Janet Martin


Easy Service by Edgar A. Guest

When an empty sleeve or a sightless eye
Or a legless form I see,
I breathe my thanks to my God on High
For His watchful care o'er me.
And I say to myself, as the cripple goes
Half stumbling on his way:
I may brag and boast, but that brother knows
Why the old flag floats to-day.

I think as I sit in my cozy den
Puffing one of my many pipes
That I've served with all of my fellow men
The glorious Stars and Stripes.
Then I see a troop in the faded blue
And a few in the dusty gray,
And I have to laugh at the deeds I do
For the flag that floats to-day.

I see men tangled in pointed wire,
The sport of the blazing sun,
Mangled and maimed by a leaden fire
As the tides of battle run,
And I fancy I hear their piteous calls
For merciful death, and then
The cannons cease and the darkness falls,
And those fluttering things are men.

Out there in the night they beg for death,
Yet the Reaper spurns their cries,
And it seems his jest to leave them breath
For their pitiful pleas and sighs.
And I am here in my cosy room
In touch with the joys of life,
I am miles away from the fields of doom
And the gory scenes of strife.

I never have vainly called for aid,
Nor suffered real pangs of thirst,
I have marched with life in its best parade
And never have seen its worst.
In the flowers of ease I have ever basked,
And I think as the Flag I see
How much of service from some it's asked,
How little of toil from me.

Edgar Albert Guest

November Now

The plush sigh of June and July has thinned

To brittle postludes strummed by wilder wind

 Autumnal braille stipples earth’s subdued yard

The hollow vale is like a farewell card

Where landscapes bear an air, not of defeat

But dusky, like the lull of busy streets

Day fawns over fragments of golden dross

They fill the chilly rills with nature’s loss

And where the prose of bare feet rose and fell

The land adapts to November’s blue knell

The big bell in the sky lowers, we know

It waits to spill star-flowers made of snow

***

A heart can ache and feel quite broken, yes,

Love’s token is a fragile happiness

November-loneliness-like, yet quite glad

For all the spring-summer-autumn we had

As deft, rough wind-song strips the clapping tree

Soon what is left is only what we see

Before our eyes or in fields of the mind

The yield of lofty dreams soft-strewn behind

And we find out, without a doubt, the touch

That once we dreaded, does not hurt so much

If we, like nature wear it well and true

Yet, surrender to life’s November too

***

The bonny ways of April days must wait

Tomorrow is a silver-soldered gate

The plate Time sets before us overflows

With blessing that This Present Day bestows

(Though, I confess, sometimes I overlook

Its portion; distracted by what Time took)

It’s up to us to use what daybreak frees

And make the best of almost-memories

November is a blip on frost-dipped strings

...of feeling far more slowly, fleeting things

Where plush sighs of June and July have thinned

To stilted serenades caught on the wind

© Janet Martin

This poem began partly while

watching another 'ordinary day' begin,

Pink-dawn seeping through deep, deep blue ...

where work waits...

  and winter too.

...and partly after reading this poem and laughing with pure joy

The Unfolding That Now Is...

From this...

...to this, in 24 hrs.

Time’s touch is much too subtle

To be torn from its intent

To run or hide is futile

For its will is dominant

The earth is like a cradle

Where the birth of being cries

The earth is like a casket

Where the leaf of autumn lies

Nature is never stubborn

And it does not fight the hand

That fills its fleeting fortune

Then gathers it up again

The wind, ah, who can see it?

Or deter its phantom course

Its evidence as public

As tick-tock’s triumphant force

This place of transient holding

Teaches seasoned Chasers this;

Time’s touch is always folding

The Unfolding that now is

© Janet Martin

Call Me Friend...

PAD challenge day 8: For today’s prompt, take the phrase “Call Me (blank),” replace the blank with a word or phrase, make the new phrase the title of your poem, and then write the poem.

In the end our needs are much the same

We are all more than our given name

Bread and butter are never quite enough

To fill heart-hollows; we all need love

“Love one another” life’s utter command

Love is the one universal demand

No one is everything unto one’s own

We walk much better together; not alone

Give a hand; give a smile, give words of cheer

Take time to listen, nay, take time to hear

For, life-long contentment, the ages will prove

Is found, not in clink of coin, but in those we love

We, creatures of common and kindred design

I’d like to be your friend; will you be mine?

© Janet Martin