TO GUIDE YOU IN YOUR SEARCH

You try to find the proper poem

for the occasion,

for the soldiers

for the seamen

who survived,

came home

and were happy

or reasonably happy,

lived long, unbroken,

decades of life

stretching past

that second birth

of homecoming,

the years of war

coming to mark

only a brief episode

in their lives, brief

compared to all

the years that would come

after they were receding,

those years of disruption

for the survivors.

But things in distance

appearing diminished

can be vast,

can throw shadows long

as when looming,

can chill 

at golden hours.

You try to find

one to capture this enigma.

Instead of finding one

you stop to write this,

not the poem

you need,

but a poem

to guide you

in your search.

13.11.2025