The Soldier and the Child

A Poem by zogzog

It was in the north…we had stopped at a holy shrine next to the highway…there were scarves, roses, and crucifixes hanging from a giant cross where a child had died…I had taken photographs and threw a pile of wet earth over the shrine. My emotions here were spiritual, sublime comfort making my inner being a calm wind…settling from within. I did not know the future. I would have joined this child if I had…

Going further into the north I stepped upon a small slab…put my foot on the four corners of the earth and said to my brother, “so here have I been…”

Crashed helicopters and memorials made a child out of me…made a man out of me…a soldier of unknown fortune…he made a believer out of me. his white concrete structure was never a passage for poets…his father had laid him to rest…unlike the child that had died on the highway…this soldier was forgotten. His only remembrance would be what the passer byes would speculate. His only memory would be of that child who’s tattered cross and relics would rot in the wetness of the earth and elements.

Where is the believer? Who are those remembered and forgotten? Not once did I contemplate over the importance of the dead child and soldier…love dwelled in the hearts of both…both were the spirits speaking/screaming. telling me to never forget…begging me to love.

Wrestling more than twice over physic fears that every soldier that had died wishes to indwell and speak…to pierce my heart the mysteries of disappearance. “In your life we live” they said…these specters that dwell

the wishing of the well….drawing life from the waters of spirit…youthful abhorrence…northern alliance…free to choose the vessel of youth…never an oracle of truth…how could it be?

Now I was devastated, dwelling now in the burnt embers of division. Crying daily…for altered was my life…I have now become both…the soldier and the child…entwined to live and cursed to cry…