Airport Lounge Remembrance after Wilfred Owen’s Send Off A few, a few, too few for drums and yells, they pass us by in airport lounges, off to foreign hells. Their camouflage no more dispels the seeking eye, so common to our life they fade in sight. They come and go like fatigued FIFO workers day and night; partners waiting for their safe return, might be the only show. No protest march, no ticker tape parade. For some silence. Slow news days provoke a story; cliched right down to myth and mateship. A charade at their expense. A death will drop the flag to half mast. To suit their cause, politicians evoke conflict a century past. We'll dredge up some connection, eyes downcast. Some will pause And think of airport lounges, passers by, a few, too few, will remember why. – S. B. Wright
Fields of France
Wind turbines, frozenin unnatural poseslike grotesque giant scarecrows,limb-flukes pointing to the earth,the sky, like dislocated wingsthat jut and gesture incoherently:nightmares of a mutant armyrising from the mire.
Flat fields as faras eyes can see –the fertile, verdantfields of France,that must dissolveto viscous mud in winter,as they did back then,sucking in the wretchedmen in uniform,war horses, pain; feastingon the corpses of the slain.
Marnay-sur-Seine, March 25, 2015 – Jena Woodhouse
Guinness Stout for Lieutenant Michael Malone, shot in Dublin in his home on Anzac Day 1916 When you see the Guinness boiler-barrel rolling along, Masquerading as something armoured and strong, It is not difficult to know That desperation always masks a bravado show. Easter ushers a new birth, Sadly, always after death; Here death won Michael Malone Shot in his home all alone. I was silenced by the shadowed plaque on the wall, It’s only now I can engage in a puny recall. Here we, too, remember the red, white and blue, As we had once danced to that tune too, As our bodies rolled into the Turkish turf, Shot down riding a distant, different surf. – Peter Gebhardt
S. B. Wright is a poet, book reviewer and podcast producer who blogs at Words Poetical.
Jena Woodhouse has two novels published by Ginninderra Press.
Peter Gebhardt is a retired judge and school principal.