The coil of summer is spent and in the cold, we bruise;

a roll of litmus papers, tears acidic in the night. 

Here death knuckles, grit bites - the fever of our jaws as we repent

 

our steadfast boots, our gallant wooden toys, our rampant

springs of duty. We swallow hard and taste the theft

with every buckle around our waist

 

and every scar stitched onto our coats. The slide of red

around our mud veins, our slug trails of war, draughts

on boards littered with graves are named so

 

lost stretches of earth reigned

by decomposition. We bury our heads, our souls,

our friends in this glacial silence.

 

Our love is home but home is dead; a compass

spun in No Man’s land, a shredded

iris that  sped our youth

 

as now we enlist in each, a mother; a prop

to save the face from the puddle. We do not trust sleep

in it’s comfort and our fear is a walking wound to save

 

Our sons that leap into action

like hares into the jaws

of a trap.