the long months dragged out
like soldiers trudging
carrying the weight
of lost buddies
on their shoulders…
they passed in slow motion
stunned by the waste
the violence none could own.
The trenches were filled with the dead,
unconscious
and exuding the stench
of their rotting journey
bones headed for Earth slowly…
those moments
wanting
to come home.
And you,
asking to wear your boots…
like a man marching
toward the unknown
manning the ship
that was your bed
the four years
of war against disease,
of holding onto life
you fought alone.
My wedding night
I dreamed
a young man
wearing knee-high boots
uniform of the civil war
approaching me
with begging in his eyes.
Accept me
is what he seemed to say
but all I wanted was to turn away.
Today he comes again
and I'm awake.
I look on him
with softer eyes
his dusty boots tug on my heart
and in myself, the grand surprise
of seeing that I value
what I once despised…
I take his hand
and wipe away the blood
and in the boots where he just stood
I find the leather smell,
the sweat and struggle gone.
A garden grows. A soldier has come home.
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