The Somme Poem by Jean Bernard Parr

a young fox too early dead
with yellow pelt, muddied by
those wheeled sofas
that ooze urgency
and lamp post-piss comfort zone
and at once empty
as abandoned sea shells
we will pile up soon
but he is dead
on his way to sniff the air,
hone hunting skills
pause for butterflies
among foxes, a poet
nothing now to be
and I think of thousands
that lay one day
in those fields of france
the bluster of wind
and a chatter like teeth
the bluster of commanders
explain to mothers
why normally
this happens only to others