THE OLD SOLDIER’S DREAM

Save the helpless children and end your shouts of war the old men cry.
Hear our weary wrangling, our heeding and warnings. The howls of hurt
and sorrow molest our souls, our hearts are sad inside of us, scraped
and bruised. There are those who are feeble and harmless who live life
and spread love all around them, nurture support and build hope in others
and yet they die by the bomb. Then there are those who think raging
thoughts, perform evil acts and kill without remorse. Savagery begins
with ignorance as the cries of broken women and abused children shred
our hearts. No matter religion or color he slays himself who kills his brother
and stamps a curse on his future dreams and a possible life in the gutter.
These battles raging know no end. Eternal soldier, someday, you will set
down your arms and discover perpetual peace—that too-long denied
missing segment of you. Comprehension comes through love more so than
through our accomplishments. My heart is wretched, sliced with regrets
and weighted with woe, because I have fought and I have killed. The
medication has not been made to halt the sorrowful, never-ending, screams
of the innocent who surround me each night. Children are nature’s
masterpieces and the sound of a child in agony goes deeper than the thrust
of any blade. Before I can sleep at night I become deranged, my mind
unhinged. But when I finally go to sleep I dream a dream of peace:

In my dream they wrap me in the winding sheet, lay me in a cold wooden
box, place the lid over it and drape the flag over my casket.