[AS: 1928 – 2014 — on 11 Oct 2009]
Old warrior, you dispatched in life
not few to an early void —
the only way, perhaps you felt,
to spare your kin and kind
a fate still worse,
and not their first.
Perhaps all warriors feel the same,
some with just cause some not.
But now your kin and kind shield you —
or what if anything survives
of you within that helpless heap of flesh,
collateral damage, residue
of love and hate, life, death and wrath yet
of their flesh flesh, and while your vital signs
still signal life it’s not in vain:
You’re still not altogether lost to them forever
even you no longer feel nor ever can again.
You’re now for them a human shield
a wall against their woe,
the final redoubt from that void
that’s those who love’s
most dreaded foe.