Summer of 1955

Locks of white
Stagger daily along the wharf
Converging to their maidens
Grande dames that flutter, graciously atop the sound

Through treacherous winds
They jolt for the mighty deep
Fuming with debauchery
And drunk on the sour spoils of kin

All to cast off the hefty years
Lingering, at the foot of each deathly tremor
Where colossal men, would stride into glory
Tin at the helm and bayonets at the ready

Spring of 1918

The silhouettes still thrash!
Scattered by malice
As ranks are pummeled and diced apart
Ravaged by chaos
Their fate, tolls within just the same
Poor fools spoiled, under the salvo’s hateful glare

And through the mists of ravenous horror
A warm glimmer, pierced the canopy of turmoil
It coiled around a youth of age nineteen
Garbed in armor, madness and searing valor

A hope so young
Beamed for this crowning warrior
Shielding his storm into the battered wilderness
Beyond every jagged stump
Through lowly craters, and above wire garbed trenches

She dubbed herself
His ghoulish keeper
Bound to docile ages past
The soul that wished him well
At the cusp of the frozen Atlantic
The soul, he was cruelly barred from bidding a solemn farewell
Coddled by silence and a frigid eternity

She settled above the heaps of carnage
Glistening with streaks of golden locks
Woven with precious glints of auburn
With every fiendish motion
She motioned as his stoic armor
Unfazed by the strewn suffering
And unmoved by the savagery of his jealous foe

The young man scaled to the top
And bolted for his vicious glory
He carved into its madness by bayonets edge
The smiles of his enemies, gushing by crimson pints
Beaming into dormancy, stained in fleeting honor
His ethereal guardian, slayed for his survival
Toiling mad, for the love of gracious death

Through torrents of fire
That raged incessantly day and night
The young stone heart of valor fought onward
Courted by bravery and backed by romance
He shed mournful affection
From within the faint sorrow of a quiet lull
The perished affair wafts faintly in remembrance
Holding young courage through hollowed nights of suffrage

The steeples tolled for everlasting peace
As the spell of armistice combed across the lands
Safety, had long forsaken him
Torn from the young lad at the ripe age of twenty
Forced to carry his honors alone
Heart broken and marooned
By the mounting weeks
And lapping elation, that carries bravery home