Before the War, Together - Robin Gabbert

[Lawrence Robinson]

Before the War, Together

In Whitherland, before the war, there were some folk who told folklore. 
They lived a simple, common life, a baker, daughter, son, and wife. 
The pretty girl with her young beau would walk along the riverbank 
to pick wildflowers together.

They gazed at trees of rusty red and skies so mauve they'd turn your head
when walking by the river bridge, when holding hearts, when holding hands, 
then picking heather near the sands, and gazing upon sunset skies and each to each 
with longing eyes, together.

They loved to cross the bridge at night and amble in the woods for hours, 
hide in church pews singing hymns as if the church belonged to them— 
affording them a special grace: a silent, tender, loving place, a place that 
they could huddle close together. 

Because then they were free to race, no wooden legs, no combat dead,
no brothers lost without a trace and no regretting things unsaid upon the bridge 
or haystack bed. They never thought that things would change that year 
they spent together.

Before the wounds, before the sores, before invading soldiers fled and burned the heather
black and red. Before her parents wept each night, the brother shot in moonlit stream. 
She, weeping on the bridge, the bed. The wood, the church, all seemed a dream. Because
now "we" was only "she" 

in this wretched, wretched war.

	- Robin Gabbert
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