Cry Out

Perhaps it is the grey, sodden weather; perhaps it is reading a small book of poems called, “CRY OUT, Poets Protest the War.” Or perhaps it is the continuing drumbeat of war talk in the news… words like World War III, and Armageddon. Whatever the reasons, these words came to me in the wee hours of the morning, and the knowledge that if there is any hope at all, we must ALL let our voices be heard. NO MORE WAR!

The guns are silent
The dying ended
Our bloodied troops are home
Peace has come to this battered world
And we will fight no more.

My father wrote poetry.
His poems in all their stages
are scribbled in pencil or Parker Pen ink
on the lined pages of a small leather bound
notebook. Words are crossed out, new ones
inserted, so many versions of the same poem
that I don’t always know which is the
final copy… if a poem is ever truly finished.
They are all I have of him who
died so young; my four-year-old memories
are few. They were written during his college
days, and were the heartfelt expressions of a young
man trying to find hopefulness in the aftermath of
the First World War, a war filled with such horrific
human carnage, that no one could imagine ever going
to war again. It was the war to end all wars. Mankind
had become too good with the instruments of
death and destruction. The League of Nations became
everyone’s hope for a lasting peace, including the young
man who wrote of broken bodies, a quiet walk in the woods,
and his wish to make a difference
in the world,
my father.

I think of how many wars we have fought
since that “war to end all wars,” wonder what
words my father would write now in his notebook.
Would he be as despondent as I often am, watching
our red, white, and blue flag-waving nation glorify
war and its ability to annihilate another; making heroes
of dead men and traitors of anyone who would voice dissent?
Would he wonder as I do how a nation as rich as ours
could choose to spend its tax dollars on military might,
sending our youth to fight unnecessary and unjust wars?
Would he shake his head in wonderment at a nation
held in bondage by fear, a nation that feels it can only
defend itself by aggressively attacking another? His
‘war to end all wars’ has become in this 21st Century
a war without end… and our president brashly names
himself, “The War President.”
Father what would you think;
what would you say;
what lines of poetry would you write today?

P. L. Morningstar