What you think
you see is a man
at prayer, but he
could be just a man

tired of war, eyes
closed, head in hard
hands, sitting there.
He sits in mud, his

uniformed backside
stained, smeared,
like a young boy
having played some

ball game in a muddy
field, with broken
wagons and dead
horses and men lying

all about, stuck in
or ****** in mud
of clay. What you
think you see is now

frozen in time, dead
men or horses counted
in millions far beyond
the mind’s conception,

lay scattered here and
there, as if some god
had cast a hand or arm
to clear (like some bored

child) his view of toys,
all games grown stale.
What you think you see
in sepia echoes through

the days of now and years
of yore, the folly, the all
unstoppable, called war.