Consider the earth as more than a speck in the night,
sky more than chalk on a warboard. Consider a swarm,
thick, an advancing cloud. Perhaps to the stouter brain,
such darkness becomes a far-off foe, slight, with no more
than spit enough to swallow. To the hair-triggered eye,
it may be the fog of four thousand fighters in flight,
each with a finger touch, light like the broken angel’s
wing. We know all gunners spit flame. So let the swarm be
a rush of bees. Let it be a bevy of starlings,
birds beyond number, newly fledged. Let it be a bright
mission of men, our familiars, not yet thunderborne,
their groomed young faces never to want for a kickstorm
of lead, never to bore-in once more unto the breach,
for God and country, for flying pay, with a command
of death and a gladness to kill.
sky more than chalk on a warboard. Consider a swarm,
thick, an advancing cloud. Perhaps to the stouter brain,
such darkness becomes a far-off foe, slight, with no more
than spit enough to swallow. To the hair-triggered eye,
it may be the fog of four thousand fighters in flight,
each with a finger touch, light like the broken angel’s
wing. We know all gunners spit flame. So let the swarm be
a rush of bees. Let it be a bevy of starlings,
birds beyond number, newly fledged. Let it be a bright
mission of men, our familiars, not yet thunderborne,
their groomed young faces never to want for a kickstorm
of lead, never to bore-in once more unto the breach,
for God and country, for flying pay, with a command
of death and a gladness to kill.
[from my chapbook Clouds as Inkblots for the War Prone
remix poem, source text: Guard of Honor by James Gould Cozzens].
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