A Green Land
All I can do is stand at the side of a green field somewhere, that exhibits no hints of red, and stare.
To allow my imagination stark over the undulating hill and pock mark.
To note the fully fledged trees in the wood swaying slightly in the warm breeze.
Their leaves shimmering and releasing a distant twitter of unseen birds with voices unceasing.
To gaze, listen and wonder.
To allow my mind to settle back to the absurd when there was no silence, in which a bird could sing and be heard,
No perch for tiny feet,
No breeze untainted with smoke or heat,
No green to be seen across those soft hillsides or in amongst the splintered wood of has been.
Just the brown of churned mud speckled with the red of poppy and blood
And the constant crump, whistles and sighs and occasional cries.
Opher 4.11.2017
I wrote this one in memory of standing on the fields of Flanders with my friend Tony, my youngest son and wife. He was showing us the battle fields which lay before us now verdant in the sunshine. We visited Oppy Wood which was latticed with trenches and whose trees had been reduced to splintered skeletons by the shelling but which was now back to its former glory.
Apart from the trenches there were the faint pock marks of shell holes. But the land had recovered. The sucking mud of Flanders on which the poppies grew so virulently among the body parts, had settled into gentler contours and lay peacefully at rest. The trees were back and the air was full of birdsong. The peace betrayed the cacophony of shrieking metal and larynxes that had been so long ago.
One was left with the question why.