Caught in the Crossfire by Elaine Christie

I am in every war wheel and battle nest
In the mutilated misery, of shrapnel stung horses
Or the vapours of broken elephants on land mines,
In the bloody bales of dolphins and sea lions, bursting from ocean charges.
I am the expendable, weft into shrouds.

 

I’m in the soaking smog, of a blistering plague,
In an orphans shrill tears, as he pulls his mother’s arm
Raven eyed she gawps into an abyss.
I’m in the thread bare corpses, damson draperies
Of death carved atrocities.

 

In the plumes of man’s best friend, loyalty traded for barking bombs.
In a mother’s buckling, at a grey masked glyph
That was once her son.
In the hushed pendulum for the nameless lost
I am the expendable, weft into shrouds,
I am indifference.