Summer

Going…going…going…gone…

Maybe I should ignore the seasons
I mean watch them come and go
With only eyes, nothing more
Not sensing the change in feeling, or emotion
And the wounds each one brings
To my brothers, sisters, body, and soul
Crippled by summer’s pierced memories

Once, on a beach before the war, I saw snow, and ice in early summer. I remember telling some guys about it, three years ago, in Summer ’22, in trenches dug only a few hundred metres from here. A few hundred metres, only, in three years. Three summers, and goodness knows how many light years away from the revolving sun in this rotating world. A few hundred metres, and some tens of thousands or so of lives.

And every time summer swings around again, those memories whack me in the back of my head, or the heart, or whatever, or maybe they just creep up, I don’t know. They certainly don’t melt away, as the old dictum about time dictates they should, or ought to. But like that door that goes round and round in those post offices where you post a fallen pal’s belongings from, they will…