Deserters
Your kind words
passed cleanly through
my vacant brain
like the dawn's dark chorus.
I was just thinking
of that wall, the blind
fold of final air,
and their sepia uniforms.
My skull smudged
in companionable mud,
I am quite thrilled
to be victimised.
Now our destinies
will be fetchingly etched
in rural stone. Pardon?
I did not hear you.
[July 1998]