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Battlefield
 

I stand on the mountain top
and all around rage the winds
the rain doth soak
and the vultures circle.

They wait then, anticipating my failure?
But what is it I must do
to have failed
or even to succeed?

How will I know my friend
when there are no directions
given me.
Alone I came, alone I shall leave.

Does it matter much then what
goes between?
But it must
for within there rages a storm

Greater than that without
for it rages silent, unseen
and unabating
driving me ever on

Ah how cruel the blows can be
they come unheralded
and somehow
fuel the storm within

Wrenching and tearing within me
pain and anguish
I cannot reach
nor understand, much less abate.

I wish to walk, untouched
across the battlefield
I plan not to wound,
but the ground

Is hidden by the frail and vulnerable
If I walk with head high,
aloof..then surely
I must wound

If I look down and take care,
then I too become vulnerable
a part of it
and surely will falter and fall too.

Uncertainty grips me,
inner turmoil leaves me sleepless
pale and torn
wanting yet afraid to seek.

If I laid down now my friend
the vultures would take me
my flesh would sustain them
my anguish extinguished

Surely that would matter little
in the perspective
of the bloody battlefield
for one warrier to succumb

Without noble struggle.
But what makes that so hard?
To quietly give in before the struggle
what pushes me ever and again, to my feet?

If I walk alone I choose my path
I need care not nor deviate
to kind compromise
Alone I can be brave, or coward as it suits

But wait - what if the path
is not empty?
If another shares the faint trail
in the bloodied dust.....

Is it better to walk together?
Or better to choose a new path and
believe that
this was not ones path afterall- but anothers....

What strange beast dwells within me
that would whisper
I would be best served
to share a path

When ever hence
I have walked alone.
My footprints but faintly mark
the trail

The wind blows but once
and all trace of my passing has gone
What then was achieved,
what reason

For my mark to lay there
in the first place
the dust would care not
had it never been marked.

The wind, noticed not
its part in obliterating
me and my presence,
past

Anji Alexander 10/11/2003