Wednesday 21 October 2009

The Way by Peter Magliocco

(Khe Sahn, 1968)


Winds ruffle
the Ho Chi Minh trail
again
where aromatic marsh
vies with forgotten
bones
mildewing beneath
soldier's gear
bats visit when the sun
ambles down from distant
horizons orange-tinged
to groan like the last
man on earth now
winds escape
a forgotten fossil
underneath remnants
from nature's evaporating
cache warm monsoon
rain sheets baptize
blurring the last footfall
of human retreat
from spectral edges
of razed villages
moldering forlornly
in nondescript grey
shadows
night will whisper
false silent comforts
around this vista
of dark dismay
yet tremulous with
earth songs
of omnipresent insects
& tread of tigers
waiting to take
another platoon
to Heaven's Gate


Peter Magliocco, Nevada, USA

1 comment:

Crafty Green Poet said...

Peter Magliocco writes from Las Vegas, Nevada, and has poetry at THE SMOKING POET, GOLD DUST, RED FEZ, lunarosity, GUTTER ELOQUENCE, BLUE HOUSE, MAIN CHANNEL VOICES and elsewhere ... His new novel is The Burgher of Virtual Eden from Publish America (www.publishamerica.com). He was Pushcart nominated for poetry in 2008