I Fell at Towton

The Battle of Towton took place during the Wars of the Roses in the spring of 1461. There was heavy snow. It was long and brutal, possibly the bloodiest battle to be fought on English soil.

I Fell At Towton

Red flesh, vivid on splintered bone
where blood flows in angry 
torrent my unseen foe emerges 
through the thickening snow 
that dulls the sound of screams and roars;
mace aloft to strike a cruel blow. 

His eyes a blaze of fear and hate;
his breath in plume
as in a scything, swirling blur 
of arms he aims 

to crush my head, it glances 
from my helmet as I swerve 
but slip and fall where mud 
and gore have mixed with ice 
slick from the snowy squall. 

On the ground I lie and to my right 
a comrade lies, a trace of tears 
frozen on his empty eyes
that stare as once they stared in birth, 
and now must gaze on death. 

A blade is lifted to the sky
and as I await its fatal bite 
I see the snow is settling now 
covering bodies with a shroud of white 
and I can only think that how 
the rose I served must win 
or why else did I fight?

Tim Fellows 2019