Winter of 1914

A soldier leaves for the front line at the start of World War One.

Winter of 1914

 

Daylight hours on the wane
tell me I must go
as a cold December rain
turns to ice, then snow.

 

Cold winds turn the weather vane
as a hungry crow
gleans the fields for bits of grain
flying to-and-fro.

 

I must leave my sweet Lorraine
in the stellar glow
as I catch the midnight train
for a place of woe.

 

We may never meet again.
War has seeds to sow
in deep trenches filled with pain,
crosses row on row.

Reviews

[jacob erin-cilberto]

no matter what war...it still separates us from loved ones...and often for eternity...

sometimes it is a necessary evil...but if only we could avoid it altogether...

but i'm an idealist from the sixties..a dreamer.

i love the images in this...even though it is universal to all wars...i got that flavor of world war I in this.

well done.

[Aethereal]

Thanks for your detailed review, jacob! The idealism of the sixties had no affect at all cuz the wars continued. People never seem to learn. They said that world war one was to be the war to end all wars, but it was only the beginning of an epic series of wars that continue to this day. The war to end all wars must be the one that kills us all to the delight of the remaining plants and animal on this planet. Our intelligence creates weapons that drive us to extinction when placed in the hands of insane leaders. In the first world war, the insane leader was Kaiser Bill.

[Angi]

Aethereal. this poem is so well done! The weather imagery, the rhyme (that does not feel forced) and the sweet longing flow right through. I can picture him leaving and I picture Lorraine standing in a cracked painted doorway. Waiting and waiting... Nicely done! Angi~

[Aethereal]

Thanks for this sweet review, Angi! I had such images in my mind as I wrote this poem, but at the same time I was thinking of all the trouble in today's world and how it's not so much different from the way it was back then at the turn of the last century. People never seem to learn from the past.

[Angi]

I love poetry that takes me right to a snippet in time. War is such a broad subject. You took me straight down through a funnel and landed me on a tiny spot in time. I love when people can do that in very few words.

[Aethereal]

Then I must do more of the same since I believe that we should learn lessons from the past. Those who have gone before us have wisdom to give if we have a mind to research what their lives were all about. They are still there like the rings of a tree supporting the tree's life on the surface that in its turn shall become another ring of wisdom.

[Karen]

This is a tender poem that reminds readers of the ravishes of war when soldiers had to tear away from their loved ones to serve their country. But the poem is not one of morbidity but of acceptance of the fate that had befallen this soldier, and still the reality of war is in the last stanza, not to be ignored or forgotten. Great poem!

[Aethereal]

Thank you very much for your detailed review, Karen! The wars never seem to end. Small children whom you see playing on sidewalks today with happy smiles could be in crushed by another war in the far future.

[Karen]

That's true. It's the children of today that will be tomorrow's soldier. I like, though, how you chose to write about a WWI soldier, and it compares so well to today's soldier since not much has changed for the soldier at war.

[Aziz Luther]

A touching poem. It shows the effects of war in which in my opinion the soldiers pay a great cost. I love this poem

[Aethereal]

Thanks for expressing how my poem brings out the same emotions in you as I had when I wrote it, Aziz! The suffering of the common soldier is mostly unsung.

[Danielle]

A sad, emotional piece but very eloquent.
Well penned!

[Aethereal]

Thanks, Danielle!

[Friday]

Very expressive although short. You get a lot across I think. Lorraine...

[Aethereal]

Thanks, Friday! It's always much better to say whatever you want to say with as few words as possible. A poem isn't an essay or a book. An epic poem is really just hundreds of individual poems that connect to each other in some way. No one ever writes a long poem, but rather a bunch of interconnected poems. To add more detail, I'd just write child poems for the mother poem.