Holding the Fort

“…Three years after the end of the First World War the trenches were inhabited by rats, lizards, weasels and the as yet unburied remains of the dead…” Documentary – BBC Radio 4

I have spent many years inhabiting graves
crawling round the decomposed remains
dwelling in an ‘other world’
ignored by the living
as the dead were abandoned.

Call me vampire but I never
sucked the blood of any living thing
and I like to think that my presence
was small comfort to the souls of those
caught up in never ending screech of mortar.

Those who survived the trench experience
came home shattered, crippled with
rotting feet and scrambled wits
shaking in the permanent pounding
shells shocking, never ceasing fire.

Call these the lucky ones then,
whose bones remain without rites,
with a white cross to mark a resting place
never reached.
Small comfort the scavenging creatures.
The small and hot-blooded
or the quickening reptile
keeping watch, bearing witness, holding the fort.

(c) Liz Willows 2000