Impressions of the Great War by a Young Georgia Poet Part I

My son, Joseph Hugh Kitchens III, is a writer. He is also a through- hiker, having walked the entire Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. From childhood he has been keenly interested in history and constantly amazes me with his knowledge. Because we have been observing the 100th Anniversary of World War I (1914-1918), I challenged him to write about “The Great War.” He replied with more than thirty poems and I have chosen three for my readers. Let us both know what you think.

Holes

Each hole is the grave of thousands,
In the no man’s land,
In the dead man’s land,
In the shattered and battered men’s land,
In the shredded and beheaded men’s land,
Where only death has domain
Our cannons are his trumpets,
Our rifles are his flutes,
Shells exploding in the night are his drums,
Sounding, sounding in the long night of our souls.

The Trapped Tank

Back, Forth
Back, Forth,
Moaning and Wheezing,
Thundering and bellowing,
Creaking and struggling,
Like a behemoth sauropod in a tar pit going,
The machine struggled,
Something went wrong,
It burst into flames,
Back, Forth
Back… Forth…
Silence and smoke

The Dying Fire

Orderlies with stretchers,
Go, go, to and fro,
Navigating on a sea of stretchers,
From the island of light around the low burning,
O so slowly burning,
Campfire,
And the dark and quiet tent.
I asked a captain, “What’s with the orderlies?”
To which he snapped harder than Charon’s rudder,
“Keep silence ya damn git, it’s the autopsy tent.”
I whispered back, “What?! You mean ALL these fellows-“,
but sharper than Atropos’s scissors he clipped back,
“Nah, Just most of ’em.” And gave me K.P. duty.