Arrows of War
Once upon a time
A single arrow from just one bow
Could change the course of war
Harold, 1066 and all that
Then scores of arrows scored their hits
English retribution at Agincourt
The arrows became bigger
Flew faster and further
Metal shafts, incendiary tips
From Russia with love
These arrows, transformed into rockets,
Destroy thousands at a time
Not just Harold’s eye
Children of War
Where have they all gone
All I see are wires
Fencing me in
My whole family disappeared
I do not know to where
Maybe to our God in heaven
Or the enemy’s prison camps
I’m too young to know
Either God or the enemy
I did nothing wrong
Why am I here?
Compassion in War
Born to cherish
Trained to kill
Lost parents, lost leg
Adopted Stateside
Growing up shouldn’t be this hard
Compassion helped me through
Dogs of War
Dog fights, as dog eats dog
Doggone tired in the dog days of summer
Dog paddle in the muddy creek
A dog’s life on the dog watch
In the doghouse, as a dogsbody
Would love to see a dogwood at home
Even better a dogeared letter from home
Expressions of War
My child
Do you understand what is going on?
No, I do not
I just think of what I have been taught
And I do not understand anything any more
The young monk looks away
Without seeking comprehension
The boy wants explanation
It will not come
What do we do?
I do not know
Nor do I
Instruments of War
There is no limit
To the ingenuity of humans
When creating methods
To destroy other humans
And those other humans
Have to use their ingenuity to
Devise methods to detect and
Disarm those devices
What a waste of human ingenuity
Peace in War
With death all around
Life goes on
Children trapped in
Monumental war scenes
Survive by doing
What they always do
If they can
Ducks are herded
To a safe place
During moments of peace
Before the river explodes again
Prisoners of War
There are winners and losers
The losers are either
Dead or prisoners
Sometimes the latter wish they were the former
Since prisoners of war are
Personifications of
Humiliation, deprivation, torture
Often the drawn-out death they missed before
Conventions dictate
But war-lords ignore
Soldiers have no control
Of what will happen
To the newly captured enemy
The Eyes of War
The body and its armor
Shrouded with turbidity
Dragged from the muddy
Creek in the river delta
Eyelids covered
But not the eyes themselves
Nearly died but still resolute
Eyes see it all
He will remember this day
Not the creek, not the mud
But what his eyes told him
About the rest of his life
Thoughts of War
What did I just do?
Was he really going to kill me
I don’t even know if it was a ‘he’
Could have been her, or a child
I did what I was trained to do
Took them out, no time to think
Anything else
Now my thoughts overwhelm me
I know I was right, this is war
But was I right to take that life
Waves of War
Wonder Beach
No longer a beach of wonder
The roiling ocean
So far from home
No Jersey Shore or Malibu this
Waves pound not sand-castles or sun seekers
But marines who do not wonder
At this tropical paradise
Nervous expectation of horrors
On the dawn patrol
Wave upon wave from the ocean, or
Wave upon wave of the enemy
Poems inspired by “Vietnam Photographs from North Carolina Veterans”,
by Martin Tucker, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 2019
