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Night Patrol |
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Death rides night air, mimicking the day's combat
charades
Black as the heart of the ace of spades
In glimmered wings soft night blustering darkness
Spurs of gleaming stars look down on us lustrous.
Soldiers in their boots around fighting holes sleeping,
Danger of life at bay keeping, in hoary throats leaping.
Shrouded by stirring jungled tiers, alive with winds dark
sigh
Heaped and sprawling boys await the next day drawing nigh.
On soft breezes, whispering elephant grass sharpens its
blades
Nocturnal sounds through a weary soldier's ear parades
Scores of angry men preoccupied with your dying, his sweet
dreams sear
Fighting back lingering thoughts of death that upon him
leer.
Prostrate threats peril, laid low its heroes
Listening for angered man, with a fear that comes and goes
Nourished hatred harsh, in blind killing hideous
Fearing Golgotha's suffering curse grown brutish.
Each man together, alone in the gloom watching
Time spins so fast, yet there's no time showing
Mid dreams and schemes of war's shadowed game
Hovering between bravery, and death's blinding flame.
Men hiding in dug-out battalions;
Young boys, by war made lions
Curse the concealing overgrowth green with spring
Can't see a blessed thing of death's killing obscene.
Weary eyes watching periled way
Perimeters dug-in, warriors mute to advancing day
Hearts plunging,
To the very core palpitating.
Afraid of awakening "proud and glorious" in hell
Life lost to cutthroats in its darkening swell
Losing their light in bottomless mud
Fighting holes filled with the brotherhood. |
By
Gary Jacobson
Copyright 2004
Listed
September 3, 2010 |
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About
Author...
In 1966-67, Gary Jacobson served with B Co
2nd/7th 1st Air Cavalry in Vietnam as a combat infantryman and is the recipient of the Purple
Heart.
Gary, who resides in Idaho writes stories he
hopes are never forgotten, perhaps compelled by
a Vietnamese legend that says, "All poets are
full of silver threads that rise inside them as
the moon grows large." So Gary says he
writes because "It is that these silver
threads are words poking at me � I must let them
out. I must! I write for my brothers who cannot
bear to talk of what they've seen and to educate
those who haven't the foggiest idea about the
effect that the horrors of war have on
boys-next-door."
Visit Gary Jacobson's site for more information
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