LETTERS IN SAND
One night as pen and paper, fell freely from my hand,
I wrote our troops in finger-scrawl on a darkened shore
Then I heard sea-drumming; coming low, like a marching band,
Words were washing from my soul and rhyming by the score
Then a feather flicked my face and fell to salty sand
But the darkness grounds all birds, to nestle on the land

Perhaps a chilling wind-blast had blown that dove-fluff free,
as some bird sat sleeping on fence or telephone line.
But the moonlit beach held neither fence, nor line, nor tree:
It only offers frothing waves and winds to chill your spine
I thought of a blonde barmaid, tattooed in poetry
“Gone But Not Forgotten” were her words for all to see.

Perhaps the feather fell from an angel, sailing past a dune,
as forceful seas of shared shame, came washing in once more.
I think I heard last season’s song, swirling through wind’s tune;
while waves wept booming echoes, like distant cannon roar.
I wrote sandy prose by the light of a blood-red moon;
knowing her son was dead and he had died too soon.

Has peace become a shell-game for peasants on the beach;
or a pearl of pain painted under a mother’s dress?
When will we learn that fighting puts mercy out of reach;
as it ruffles foreign feathers in a desert mess?
Will wartime propaganda be the last song we teach
to un-hatched generations paying for lies we preach?

The next morning at sunrise I sought my sandy scrawls;
All the beach let me say lay in letters that washed away.
Like some sorry marching band, as a singing angel falls;
grisly gulls pecking crabs seemed to bow and pray;
to dove duets, cooing love-songs, with their calming calls.
Planes had blown that feather free, while making troop withdrawals.

by Patrick Lancaster (AKA Jeffersons Ghost)