Where there were green fields

Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg

On a ridge, astride my horse,
A scene of hell spreads before me,
An acrid pall hangs over a valley,
Wild flowers no longer grow here,
Their splash of colors erased,
Where green grass grew, mottled grey,
What the eyes see, the ears refuse,
Sounds that no human should hear,
The metallic rain and thunder that fell,
Replaced with the rasp of suffering,
A constant wasp stinging the mind,
Burrowing into the body’s soul and sinew,
What madness possesses men to so struggle,
What insanity this sacrilege to earth,
Religion, ideology, imagined boundaries,
If there be gods what must they think,
What punishment greater awaits us all,
And yet we pursue, we choose sides,
Never really understanding why,
Reason clouded by ones heated passion,
Later in reflection, supping a bitter cup of regret,
I turn away riding into the fog of time,
The lesson is never learned, never realized,
It is a continuously spinning many-sided dreidel,
We are all doomed by its predictable choices,
Our only salvation is tomorrow, let it not be another today.

©2013, Donald Harbour

That smell

it is recorded in a brain cell
that one particular scent
the bouquet of it stains
as wine on a linen dress
an ambrosia of memory
carrying its own fetidness
that stench awakens consciousness
a cloddish backhand of the past
one only need savor its tang
the rankness of remembrance
is not the perfume of passion
nor the musk of desire
no it is the foulness of battle
searing nostril burning smoke
the odor of fear of stale sweat of pain
the stink of the jungle
the rancidness of the rotting earth
all nature returning to dust
the sounds can be dismissed but
never the malodorous carcass of death
an unwanted smirch upon life
the vial is opened so easily
bacon cooking on the stove
the smell of a gun oil rag
acrid Fourth of July fireworks
a red fluid reeking of iron
road kill baking in the sun
the obscenity permeates the nose
that offending orifice of breath
then like a passing bullet
it is gone until some noisome finger
pulls that mentally stored trigger
to fire that one overpowering sense
wounded by the mind again

©2011, Donald Harbour