11th November. Remembrance Sunday. Armistice Sunday. Remembering all who fell in wars, past and present.
I have his letters –
the youngest of the great-uncles,
Danny,
a boy-name for a beloved brother –
wrapped in soft, rough, brown paper,
pencil-written notes
from a hand more used to sowing and planting,
tending crops and animals,
than writing to his mother.
The censor’s pen has slashed through the place-names
“Somewhere in France”
and that is where his body lies,
in the mud and screaming carnage
of one more stupid war.
And thousands of miles away
the bog cotton waves white pompoms of peace
over the now-deserted croft
and the long northern sky looks down.
And another boy dies screaming in a foreign land
in an even more meaningless war,
while the warlords,
this time in business suits not khaki uniforms,
count the value of their shares in oil.
One More Stupid War Copyright 2007 Dorothy M. Stewart
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