Sunday, September 19, 2010

Poem for Today

Long Wait
A soldier’s bride awaits his return from a tour
of duty in the Rhodesian bush.


She sighed, turning her gaze
through windowed anticipation,
looking towards the place
where he would be.
How could she know,
in some empty spot
on a grass-covered kopje,
he lay there, silently
mouthing her name
through sun-cracked lips;
near lifeless eyes
half-seeing
shattered legs,
her face,
their life,
before all this:
half hearing the whisper
of her sighs.
A solitary tear spills
on his dust-caked skin . . .
and he is gone.

© 1978 Colin Gordon-Farleigh

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