syria

[eclipse]

The moon was buried in an unmarked sky wearing
my face, soldiers trained ghosts not to haunt those
whose identity's had been displaced. Moving through
villages winter seemed to lose its sense of self, tasting
the cold it's shaking hands held the dead.

As soldiers advanced the night walked backwards with
holes in its boots, those children saved parachuted
through cavities. The day called for commitment,
measurement, for the ascent of ideals; and of transfiguration.

I heard hungry trees near the desert talking about becoming
ladders to the clouds to taste the rain, the desert spoke of
raising insurgent sandmen to ride horses to prise the moon
from the teeth of the wolf; two lots of blood, dust and sand,
ideologies intermingled strand by strand.

I was held by an image of a map of this land in the glass of
heavens door falling through space, its trajectory corresponds
with ours as we move beyond solace.

[Tinker]

Hi Barry, Love the imagery in this, it serves up one rich line after another. It reads like a sonnet. (with a few extra lines) I like it.

~~Tink

[tonyv]

I love poems with the names of places for titles. This one is especially provocative -- "syria" -- and I anticipated chaos. What I found instead was balanced turmoil, commotion tempered by an unexpected order where

 

... soldiers trained ghosts not to haunt those
whose identities had been displaced ...

 

-- and where even the "hungry trees near the desert" were considering collaboration. The distillate for this reader: an imminent emergence.

 

Tony