The Battlefield
So this was Agincourt.
Or Gettysburg.
Or Arnhem.
Or, who knows?
Some long remembered battlefield,
scarred and somewhat canonized,
with a brazen plaque.
There was a stone wall, I recall,
and approaching it,
unarmed,
a meadow.
It was a garden in June,
boughed with the weight of summer,
bound down with honeysuckle and purple ropes of blackberry,
breathing slowly out its perfumed breath,
watching the swallows.
And then,
like a stray bullet,
a hummingbird ricochet’d behind my ears,
and I threw myself down
and felt the warm earth sigh.
© Mike Absalom
