How eloquently and beautifully we hid from each other.
You with your righteous truths, hard  and cold like granite.
Marking lost-love’s old bones.

I gripped your proffered broken shovel. Worn blade rusted, and shaft broken.
Aged and useless now, worked and worked on too much cold, hard ground.  
And so the old, cold, bones below lay undisturbed.
Deep and all but forgotten  
Forever waiting to be found.  
                

Mine? Barbed wire…a measured demarcation simply, efficiently separating a field of dreams from a shell-pocked Somme….taught, unyielding, sharp and unforgiving.


You, a brave soldier hacked and bit and and gnawed at the unforgiving steel wire, tormented by the verdant vision, which lay beyond.
Striving to reach that goal.
That which lay beyond the muddy battlefield….
Beyond the rigid stinking corpses….
Beyond the ghastly horror.
I know you saw a bright field of soft scented blooms and dreamed of resting, head pillowed on sweet, rainbow petals, scented nectar and  soft green grass.

I  would have gladly surrendered the wire cutters, but, blunted and useless, dulled by one or two, too many tries… there was no use.
You see my dear, they were long ago worn down. Worn down on many a marbled  headstone.
Their once keen edge, ground and blunted on words which said ‘here lies love’
(May it rest in peace).

There they sit and there they lie, the gravedigger and the soldier….
The soldier, torn and tattered upon the ****** barbs……
The gravedigger, frail and worn, broken shovel resting on broken feet…..

These were the culmination of our defences
Our defences…
Mine a spiked barrier,
yours an  epitaph in  stone.

******, battered love hungry body
and weeping gravedigger by loves tombstone.