The Earth Bled Red

25 April- ANZAC day. A day we recognize our servicemen (and women) for the sacrifices they made, the lives invested and lost for those of us fortunate enough to call Freedom a reality. This is a strain of thought regarding the sacrifice- not just of sons and brothers, fathers and uncles, but of a generation of young men who never got the chance to come home. They didn't make it beyond those front lines, and the dreams they might have had were never realized. Perhaps we owe our lives, our very existence, to these brave warriors who stood in the face of fear and certain death and found the courage to go anyway. May they never be forgotten though I know not who they were.

The Earth Bled Red

Courage did not come lightly to the men who searched it out
It did not stand at the ready, its fists clenched
It wore no smile on its face
Did not breathe easy
No courage did not come lightly
But it did come
It rose up within the gaping terror of what lay before them
rose up against the night and the dawn of an impossible hope
rose because it had to, a requirement of nature
rose to move lead feet forward towards fate and foe
this sea of men, our bright, young men
Young men, ruddy and fresh faced, with lives that stretched before them
who brokered the swollen shore and were no more
Lives cut short
down in their prime
before their time
and the earth bled red

Foreign soil embraced the fallen
swallowed their innocence as the world went mad
Their battle bruised bodies lay scattered in the shallows
and hugged the ground like rejected lovers
the cold earth offering a final kiss
and their dreams ran out with tears and sweat and blood
dreams of home and comfort forsaken, and distant shores never to be seen again
dreams of lives lived only in the realm of imagination
never to be realized
never to go home
to make their bed in an unfamiliar landscape of blood and bone
to lose themselves, brothers, strangers, and find a unity in death
Lives cut short
down in their prime
before their time
and the earth bled red

Men stood shoulder to soldier
brothers for a cause
estranged from their past, they forge a marriage of circumstance
their fear a raw ribbon vein
their courage stirred by necessity
these boys, in whose absence a mothers heart breaks
and a generation of possibility is stolen
they advanced through the mud and the mire
clambered over the fallen
their fear welling
courage at their throat
and gave away their lives
sacrificial lambs for the freedom of we- who were yet to be
Lives cut short
down in their prime
before their time
and the earth bled red