In Transition

He's but a halcyon thing, aware that rifle rounds and shrapnel bursts have no effect on fate. He does not wince in the face of volatility, these vociferous little shells. Billy or Hans pushes East or West. It's seldom direction that calls attention to one's walking, it's the walking calls attention to itself. The ground underfoot demands more than any sky laid overhead. 







His uniform clings dampened, heavy under excess weight of brine. A belt is tightly cinched to fragile frame. He's cut four new holes to keep trousers high and away of the fall of boots.

Behind him, young men cry out in reaction as nervous systems send alarms to alert brains of unfamiliar earth, inert, and lodged within grey tissue. All the while, snow softly stacks upon itself, calmly and without order, to cover soldiers fallen slack.

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He's older now and he'll not fool death again. He has no desire to shout. An old man sits. Often, he reflects on those years past, when Atlaua blessed him, with a profound calm usually reserved for summer swimmers.

With open eyes and sprawling limbs he crashes again into the current, into the ease of water, knowing it will be forever loved, inextricable as it is from life.