Written at a Poetry Business workshop in 2019. Re-worked several times. With thanks to John Foggin for some excellent advice to tighten it up.
Unknown Soldier
He lies in the sun, a map
in his outstretched hand.
Music, a song in unfamiliar tongue
drifts from a nearby house
and flows through a haze of heat.
It washes over him, entering
deafened ears. The sun-baked
sand shows no noon shadow.
Static from his radio scatters
the languid flies that buzz
around the blood-black pools
around and beneath him.
The crosses on his map
mean nothing now.
He is blind and cannot feel the insect
crawling on his reddening face.
Even in this blazing heat,
he is cooling.
The music stops, the radio cuts out
and the insect is still.
Everything is dead.
Everything.
Tim Fellows 2020
Image by Dariusz Sankowski from Pixabay
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