Today, I unexpectedly felt like writing a poem about war. Perhaps more specifically, I wrote it about those left behind while war calls others away. I was inspired by watching Testament of Youth, which was a hugely popular memoir written after WWI based on events during that period.
I'm not sure what else to say about it, but I hope it conveys an emotion some have felt, expresses something in poetry they would liked to have said, or simply sits empathetically along side them in their remembrance and grief.
I'm not sure what else to say about it, but I hope it conveys an emotion some have felt, expresses something in poetry they would liked to have said, or simply sits empathetically along side them in their remembrance and grief.
This Lonely Wood
This lonely wood was quiet once.
Its voice was still and sweet,
As you and I with friends along
Did revel, play, and meet.
We did not hear its salient songs
Aloft on springtime wind,
Our cachinnating cries too loud –
Those cries I’d now rescind.
If I had heard the message then
Would I have let you leave?
Without a kiss, a word, a touch
The things the war has reaved?
But time swept through this lonely wood,
A summer call to arms
Hailed boisterous boys and valiant girls
And stole their youthful charms.
And hastened them from summer’s streams
To harvest’s fields of dread,
And turned them each to autumn leaves
With hues of sanguine red.
This quiet wood screams loudly now;
Its silence chills me still.
And winter’s pall, though snowy white,
Augments its din so shrill.
Could we have heard? Would they still go?
To fight for ill or good?
These questions stand forlorn as I
Within this lonely wood.
by Rich Bailey
7/16/17
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