Dark Lightning

There’s nothing but cold silence after the battle. It rattles the heart.

Something ended and something is left eternal. Something has moved apart.

No one survived and only me, a ghost of myself, passes over the scene.

Not long ago there was passion and fury here,

passion of the body, fury of the spirit.

Both existed joyously before the battle started. 

Both continued achingly when hostilities commenced.

Both sides were right, both sides were wrong,

In the end neither side got what they wanted,

for war is not about redemption no matter what anyone says.

Each side had fervent soldiers who rallied and 

each side had civilians who hid away at home.

The soldiers were activating complexes of a feeling-toned drive,

they needed to risk all for the loftiness of their mythic cause.

The civilians prayed for peace in the now but remained conflicted

by a troubled past at odds with an idealized future 

that hope alone could not reconcile.

The two combatants were once united as close as can be,

they identified as one, they relished being together.

But then a dark wedge fell between them,

a bolt of black lightning, a crippling charge of horrendous fate.

It was nothing either of them could foresee,

but it was also nothing they would ignore.

A down spiral of attacks and traumas, reopened wounds 

and strategic retreats led them from argument to mortal combat.

They prayed they were fighting to restore the union they once had.

They felt they were fighting for the truth each held within. 

But their union and their truth simply could not coincide

with the dark wedge gouging out a space between them.

Overnight each night, traces of hope mixed with exhaustion between skirmishes.

They dreamed that victory or divine intervention simply had to appear

to rescue the situation, make a truce, and affect a miracle restoration.

But the stinging glare of morning always reappeared 

and the stone-faced ramparts were engaged again.

As before, slings and arrows were hustled into the fray.

Rage and shouts and bloody chaos escalated beyond all defenses.

Eventually, both sides outflanked the other and struck swift and true.

And now there is silence. No passion or fury to be felt.

The battlefield lays fallow. A dank afternoon fog rolls in.

Only ghosts are left to wander and dream of a love that once was.