War’s Autumn

The season’s colors shiver as autumn begins its transition,

Die-hard apples clinch to quaking branches,

Fearful to become ground cover for sheep,

Oxen,

Cattle,

And soldiers.

Tis a rush to beat winters enslavement,

As already smoke wafts above the roofs,

Reminding villagers that harder days are coming.

The sheep herder lights a long-stemmed pipe,

Continues whittling his stick,

Catches a glance or two of a woman hanging thread-bare cloths on the drying line,

All while the humpbacked men roll the barrel of hard cider

Into place in anticipation for the cold and wanton night of fear.

Grazing cattle munch their habit,

Unaware that waring thunder is about to happen,

As children play soldier games,

Marching in step for some,

Standing in Patton defiance for others.

Yes…

Wars define certain years,

But the clock of self-destruction stays perpetual in time,

Inviting not the valley of peace,

The heavens of protection,

Or the reality of humans being humans,

But the inevitability of battle.

Bestiality meeting bestiality of another kind.

The pipe-smoking villager of so many in a valley of vulnerability,

Thinks if Nature’s swirling winds change direction,

He’ll hear the air of bird whispers

The distant rush of the mountain brook

The dawning wake of the frog…

But it doesn’t.

Instead…

The cobblestone roads rumble with the tank treads of destruction,

Even as the villager with the pipe

Runs helter-skelter for cover,

Muddled in mind,

Innocently unaware he’s still whittling the stick,

The simple knife of expression

Drawing the first blood of the day

As his carved virgin of peace takes form

For naught.