'INFLAMED': FROM AN IMAGE BY 'BOTANIC_ANGEL_ARTS'...

Inflamed…

(from an image by ‘botanic_angel_arts’)

Thrown, blown sideways,

Losing the load he was bearing;

Tumbling, stumbling into some blasted hole,

Shrapnel piecing a shoulder, his wild eyes staring…

Pained, strained movements,

Cursing the blood he was losing;

Curling, furling inside the blasted hole,

Stretcher and patient lost, his confused mind musing…

And then the shell-hole’s detritus ignited

Where he lay dazed,

A vicious conflagration

Of flame and heat and threat;

And then the wire-fringed inferno incited

Panic, as, half-crazed,

He saw in his imagination,

An apparition and regret…

Torched, scorched hair,

Tangling flame-red with barbed-wire

Haunting, enveloping him in that blasted hole,

His memory of her now corrupted and dire…

Charred, scarred face,

Bleeding tears in rivulets of fire;

Dreaming, screaming, he, in hell’s blasted hole,

Slips down into a grave, deep within mire…

Pete Ray

8th June 2020 

The image by ‘botanic_angel_arts’ brought to mind a Pre-Raphaelite model but also an apparition of her which might have appeared to a mortally wounded stretcher-bearer in a burning shell-hole during World War 1.

The soldier would likely have known the Pre-Raphaelite models, if he had been a medical student or the like. and when a fire broke out in the hole, maybe his imagination saw this unsettling image just before he died…