Scrap Book

(6 June)

 

Cotton, leather, metal, glass

Plastic would come after

The things of Earth are drawn out and used up

As if the jealous ground would never notice

 

But this is the way of war

It doesn’t care about the ground

That will receive us

Before, during, and after

 

Creation cracks

Under the weight of it

And the blackened sky

Over boiling water

Earth will receive it all

And close it up

And maybe set to heal

 

We are done

The Earth is done

Afterward, there will be

Some kind of peace

Grandfathers come home

Grandmothers come home

To be black-and-white remembered

 

C L Couch

 

 

Unknown or not provided – U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16455209

The beachhead is secure, but the price was high. A Coast Guard Combat Photographer came upon this monument to a dead American soldier somewhere on the shell-blasted shore of Normandy.