You were never lost
Before the fog of war
Your clear brown eyes
Drank in the world
You loved so dearly.
Your shade stands beside me,
Now, a scant decade past
When I stood beside
Your untimely rest, that
Earthen tear that holds you.
We hear these sounds
With no sense of celebration
Your day has forever ended,
There is little grace
In your lonely death.
You were never lost
Before the fog of war
Nor after, though you strayed.
My heart was always with you
And is unto this day
Through sunset and the turning
Of time I walk your
Unseen paths, hold, as memory
Grants, your remembered
Eyes in the tendrils of my thoughts.
Beyond the fog of war
You slipped through fingers
Grasping to bring you home
Hands lifting you up
Memory casting you down
Memory of the fog of war
Cast doubt upon your worth
Sight obscured by the haze
Of action, the fog a cloak,
The war a stage, doubt a script.
Now the war is forgotten
Despite its heat, your brothers
In arms mount the earthen ranks
And regimented death gathers
Battalions to join your ending
Beyond the fog of war
There is no happy refrain
No clever turn of phrase
To wash clean this sacrifice
Of life with no reason.
Beyond the fog of war,
There is only silence.
A broken horn
And fallen pipes,
The players gathered
To fête the fallen.
You were never lost
Before the fog of war.
But now that fog
Has taken you
And all that remains is silence.
Copyright © 2020 Lee Butler. All rights reserved.