Fool's Gold, Belgium 2014 Poem by Sheena Blackhall

He was not whistling cattle up the lane
With his border collie, Flash,
Slinking along like a wraith

He was not jingling his change
In his moleskin jacket, at the bar of the village pub

Those times he kept like gems in a locked chest
Every fresh attack turned one to paste.

His finger pulled the trigger mechanically,
Like a bird scarer,
A pigeon firing at hawks

When the mortar blew the next man's head away
He pissed himself
An ordinary man who knew himself destructible
He missed clean water, linen, new baked bread
The homely comforts

Around him, thousands perished, swift or slow
Stupidly, fearfully, doing the barbed wire jig

Years later a Belgian farmer ploughed him up
Too late for him to feel the warming sun