HOME | DD

Description
Once more into the fray…

We landed in flames, everyone broken or gone,
taken by the crash or the frost.
In this vast whiteness, this howling void,
we are alone in the wreckage of our wasted trust—
twisted metal and shattered bodies.
The day howls and blinds, and at night
we are enveloped in a welcoming embrace,
a dark and deepening cold.

Into the last good fight I’ll ever know.

Newcomers come from the gloom, drawn
to the smell of flesh cooked by flaming fuel.
Death comes howling—jaws and claws and rage.
Onwards, outwards, I push them towards the trees.
Trudging through snow we are hounded.
They surround us in the night, in the trees, howling
—silenced suddenly by their dark lupine king,
fur thick as winter night, emerald eyes ablaze with hate.
There is no fear in a wolf’s countenance.

Live and die on this day…

I can only think of her, how she must have felt
at the end—my end, too, or so I thought.
We are still so close, separated only by
the squeeze of the trigger-finger,
or the jaws of winter’s hellhounds.
She was taken by a different cold embrace,
sliding away into a landscape beyond
the reach of my sight.
I don’t know if she is waiting,
but hope is all a man has left
when love is taken into the grey.

Live and die on this day…

For the survivors, lost men fighting together,
of whom only faded photographs remain.
Their memories breathe new life
into my own. They have given me purpose
again, reason enough to push forward,
to fight, to leap over the precipice
and into the chasm before me.
I kneel in the den of the wilderness gods,
winter’s wild wardens. The king approaches
emerald eyes burning brighter than before.

Come with me once more, my friends.
One last push into the grey, into
the last good fight we’ll ever know.
On this day we lived.
On this day we died.

Description
Once more into the fray…

We landed in flames, everyone broken or gone,
taken by the crash or the frost.
In this vast whiteness, this howling void,
we are alone in the wreckage of our wasted trust—
twisted metal and shattered bodies.
The day howls and blinds, and at night
we are enveloped in a welcoming embrace,
a dark and deepening cold.

Into the last good fight I’ll ever know.

Newcomers come from the gloom, drawn
to the smell of flesh cooked by flaming fuel.
Death comes howling—jaws and claws and rage.
Onwards, outwards, I push them towards the trees.
Trudging through snow we are hounded.
They surround us in the night, in the trees, howling
—silenced suddenly by their dark lupine king,
fur thick as winter night, emerald eyes ablaze with hate.
There is no fear in a wolf’s countenance.

Live and die on this day…

I can only think of her, how she must have felt
at the end—my end, too, or so I thought.
We are still so close, separated only by
the squeeze of the trigger-finger,
or the jaws of winter’s hellhounds.
She was taken by a different cold embrace,
sliding away into a landscape beyond
the reach of my sight.
I don’t know if she is waiting,
but hope is all a man has left
when love is taken into the grey.

Live and die on this day…

For the survivors, lost men fighting together,
of whom only faded photographs remain.
Their memories breathe new life
into my own. They have given me purpose
again, reason enough to push forward,
to fight, to leap over the precipice
and into the chasm before me.
I kneel in the den of the wilderness gods,
winter’s wild wardens. The king approaches
emerald eyes burning brighter than before.

Come with me once more, my friends.
One last push into the grey, into
the last good fight we’ll ever know.
On this day we lived.
On this day we died.