Seeing Things…
(a poem to accompany Sara Johnson’s painting, ‘Winter Floods’…)
Exhausted.
Back propped against vertical duckboard, entrenched.
An unlit, damp cigarette hung hapless
From silent, dry bloodied lips.
A dishevelled Lieutenant stared
And ruminated.
And gazed at an autumn flood reflected
In placid shallows.
Infested.
Lice upon sore skin in uniform’s seams itched.
A rustic copse stood awry, leafless,
Silhouetted by amber sunlight’s grip.
The disturbed officer despaired
Whilst prostrated.
And dreamed a homeland sunset, perfected
By peaceful shallows.
Detested.
Feet ached from mud and water, boots drenched.
Mind distorted by a cruel, sodden war, mindless.
Burnt, shattered trees, mere strips
Straggled, their blackened souls bared
And devastated.
And the soldier saw fire and blood, encrusted
Above pallid shallows.
Contrasted.
On that battlefield he lounged, bewitched
By the merging scenes of peace and war, seamless.
A need. A desperate longing. The drip
Of life ebbing away, but his as yet spared.
Death procrastinated.
And his despair demoralised, his will cruelly tested
Beside putrid shallows…
Pete Ray
22nd October 2021
Thought the painting was engaging.
Winter floods, skeletal trees, reds/browns…
Made me think of a WW1 soldier musing at his devastated surroundings in a break between shelling.
Battered trees. Shell holes full of water, death traps…
Maybe he thought of home in Suffolk and those mind images mingled with the reality of where he actually was…
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