artwork: lidija ivanek
Mine Field
by
Edward John DiMaio
I
am darkness waiting in soil, crazed by
time
and things too small to matter.
A
plan, strategy, or lie set me in this
fertile
field. Those reasons shifted to other
lands. Scared, crazed boys I laid for are
gone,
old men with stories to tell. Our
paths
did not cross.
Shells
of war no longer vibrate my
tenuous
form. Other kinds of vibrations
come
to me now. Some flow from hooves
of
oxen pulling shiny plow blades
through
fertile fields. Your eyes
may
catch a flash of sunlight off the
mirrored
blades.
A
flash waits within my rusty soul.
Near
where I lay children play. I feel
the
light vibration of their toughened feet
running
freely in the light of day.
Watching
their exuberance you may see
sunlight
flash bright in their eyes.
A
flash waits within me.
Mine
is a killing flash, that maims all in
its
path. I am the flash that would
splatter
the farmer with bits of mangled
oxen. I am the flash that would sever a
playing
child.
When
I flash, tension returns, war rages
once
again.
Until
that time I will wait here
among
soft treading creatures of this
fertile
field.
~
previously published in Sound, Scent
& Light
(The Face of May)
