Volume 1980|Issue 1 Article 42 2-6-2013 The War

Amaranthus Article 42

Volume 1980 | Issue 1

2-6-2013

The War

Margi Derks

Grand Valley State University

Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/amaranthus

Recommended Citation

Derks, Margi (1980) "The War," Amaranthus: Vol. 1980: Iss. 1, Article 42.
Available at: http://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/amaranthus/vol1980/iss1/42

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la Ranney Rode

Pushing off from the threshold of necessity

I tu rn and face myself.


I see my essence emerging from the

Depths of insecurity,

Glowing with purity,

Through the rippling sunshine.


The discordant harmonies clouded the course,

Enticing me into the labyrinthine despair.

Amid the lugubrious and silent screams of futility

Circling about, closing in on me,

I was losing myself---until the

Thunderbolt awakened the dreams

Deep within the core;

Perspective freed the sky for me,

Now only sunshine seems to blaze on through.


The road is clear now, the obstacles in view;

I can see to reach the stars,

To touch the knowledge that surrounds me

While I'm on the road to Findout.


LGR

The War

The charred trees know
where it began.
They and the barren earth remember
first glittering projectile
on an unsuspecting summer's day,
falling to exPLODE!

40

Voices screamed as all about them
41
flying roofs and rafters fell

and chintz draperies

from upper middle-class homes

went up in smoke.

Blooms of fire

speckled with shards

of broken bones and glass

flowered from the iron tall cities

to the wide-eyed panicked villages.

No country nor man neutral

as the products of our progressive insanity

rendered what little

nature had maintained.

Anguish and self-destruction reigned

as the land retched up its dead.


Now the oceans settle

into quiet ebb and flow

though filled with remnants

of earth and sky

and covered

with a poisonous shroud.

The air is cold

in the shadowed empty places,

and furnace hot

where unrelenting sun

still stares

through a torn atmosphere.

Great channels

dotted with islands of broken concrete

and human flesh

run timeless distances

throughout the land

that God forgot -­
or, cared not to remember,

or, allowed to decide its own fate.

Its own death.


Margi Derks