Maturing Fields

 

He is only twenty-two but six times

the sycamore leaves have fallen

over these maturing fields,

since whiskey-breathed, fresh from football;

His best friend was killed by a bullet

that also shot his youth away.

 

He held his friend’s hand, felt their blood cool.

This was not the first death

he’d witnessed but the refuse of green dreams

that pulsed minutes before through

his red arteries and veins bled into soil with him.

adrenaline and hate tensed his hand

 

until he dreamt of clutching a gun, firing.

He walked beside the canal,

thought of his cousin, beaten, a stone weight

tied around one ankle and thrust

into the muddied waters for his corpse

to be dredged up days later. He wished

 

for the simple life: school, music, church,

football on a Sunday afternoon but grief

was cut deep as their graves,

sometimes he thought he heard his friend

calling out for revenge from the hard white wall.

And so he enlisted to Oglaigh na hEireann,

Reviews

[Steve]

This one makes me angry when thinking of 'military action', or whatever else the governments want to call WAR.