Station Road
is a sack full of poppies
and war and women
and existence,
bunting strung
throughout
the drunken village
as I honour
whose silhouettes
lay down at rest.
As the remembrance
Is perfected,
everywhere I look
each eye holds a secret
of agony or love
masked by the saddest smile
I have ever known,
as we think
of those
in glistening boots
until he strained the top lacing.
A victor –
great Grandfather
reminiscent of a young cadet,
an astonishing moment
for the self-preserved
a reunion fuelled
with jargon
outside homes
full of the unknown
but without life
for the dark to weaken.
Wise men live
to become wiser men,
vigilant in turn
they ponder
and give their prints
to a wraith in a soldier’s way,
shoulders taut
arms still like board
and their knees
like a well-oiled joint
march on as they
have always done.
Zack Ashley