This is about youth drawn into war, unaware of its toll. It's a cautionary tale. Published in Ygdrasil (different version), copyright J. Donald Coonrod.

A clock sounds the time; a parade of drums beats in my mind as I sit,
silently remembering, the faint cries of youths scuffling in their games among fallen leaves--brown dust now--sweated up and cold in the breezes of early spring.

Their tumbling bodies touched, reassuring each other they were half-way men, matchless in spirit, playing for the glory of muscle and Bernadette’s casual smile.

They were yearning youths who passed too soon through a fractured prism of history, into an archipelago of bitter doom, taking their last communion laced with political wine.

In death, they knew finally they had never gone to war. Different races and faiths had simply scuffled on a winter day and then laid down sadly together in earth, slowly covered by falling leaves, beautifully intricate in their designs.