Elisha

15

The steady rhythmic sound of hooves struck the ground by the thousands. Weapons aimed. Targets chosen as men bolted down into the peaceful meadow that lay beyond.

I as a child once saw this hillside as a magical place. The luscious grass beneath me, echoes of tweets and twitters from the soaring birds above as I dreamt with all the imagination and wonder of a young boy. Not today no bird dared to chirp today.

Explosions, noises, and screams echoed into the vast mountains beyond. An eruption of fire and piercing metal lay just to the right. Bullets flying through the air to the left, yet no one called for a cease fire. Hell raged on right before my bulging eyes. My bleeding ears could make out the impact, clashes of guns and metal all around. Both armies of boys meshed together like dark and light colliding in that beautiful hour after sunset. Red, red was all I could distinguish out of all the chaos that enveloped around us. A metallic scent of hot blood ran down my arms. A force of anguishing power smashed into my chest.

My boys fell left and right. One shot after another. Round after round. Screams after screams. Hot masses of bleeding out soldiers one after another falling to the blood stained hill below. The targets became so blurred I couldn't make out who was on who's side.

Earth, I could feel a mixture of earth and wet grass beneath me now. Falling, I couldn't recall falling.

The soil beneath my aching body was soon the only thing I could feel. My vision became a blur of motion whether human or not I couldn't decipher. Soon the noises distilled into a poisonous silence. No screams or explosions. Just the crickets. Oh the crickets how they symphony together. Harmonizing without trying the crickets began to lull my crumbled mass to sleep. I lay there with my fallen brothers. I lay there for...for what? It was so confusing now. War seemed so important till this very moment. War...war would be my lullaby now, a raging, endless, and merciless war. The thought plagued me as I took my last breath. The last breath taken on that blood stained hill on that summer’s eve. The last breath of life for a hero so young., a hero who was simply another victim of that tattered red flag.

(My poem is set on a summers eve during the setting of the civil war. It commemorates the soldiers of that war and all other wars.)