The Three In The Forest / A Farewell To Comrades

The Three in the Forest

They told us the sky had roots in this evil land of Orcs,
wires sunk like veins into peat,
a tower with a name of thunder and prayer,
55Ж6МЕ «Небо-МЕ», the cloud-reader,
counting swallows of metal above the pines.

The forest listened with a thousand dark ears.
Its needles kept the night like small green knives.
Bark held its breath. Mushrooms blinked like wet buttons.
Somewhere the moss learned our footfall by heart.

Thirty and more well-trained soldiers moved in those trees,
boots teaching the needles to keep secrets.
So we did what we men of shadows just never, ever do:
we lied to live. Even eyes-on-target pure suicide.
We all agreed, more anxiously than I’d have guessed.
We lit a little star at mouth-level,
passed it left, passed it right,
baptized the air with resin and smoke,
getting high as all fuck on enemy territory,
and sealed a pact with the quiet night.

But the forest carried another pact in its teeth.
Thirteen of theirs, long-range patrol eyes,
walking like mirrors toward us, the worst of luck.
And the green world stiffened into church pillars.
Gunfire took the vowels from the morning.
We moved like foxes between white birch ribs,
scoot-and-shoot, breath-and-bark,
while the other men, recce men, their best,
rooted to the spot like saints carved from wood.

I sang out with my rifle, three notes,
three fallen, then the hymn found my calf,
a clean in-and-out, a red mouth through pixels.
And my blood-loss unknotted me from time.
I fell upward into that place without wind,
where the soul’s ear has no eyelid.

I was somewhere beyond somewhere.
Was this Heaven, Purgatory, maybe
even the Hell I’d well earned?

There, a linoleum river began to speak:
small feet, squish and snap, herons stepping;
a white refrigerator opened like a chorus;
milk poured, bright river over the rim;
a cupboard door, a small vow;
Froot Loops rattling like colored rosaries
into a bowl of enamel dawn;
television light, a round sun that laughs;
the Teletubbies chanting their soft liturgy.
And my heart, once a dog on a chain,
lay down like a warm coat at wee Brittany’s feet.

Amen, I whispered to the kitchen past.
But the forest tugged my sleeve of pain,
lifted me back by the edges of my breath.
My two brothers had taken me up,
one with a furrow across the arm,
one with a kiss of iron at the ribs,
and they walked almost running,
hoisting me like a bell through Hell,
toward The-Place-Beyond-The-Pines.
We were likely out of danger, but
no one trusted mercy, not in these trades.
Even the moss looked over its shoulder.

Behind us the thirteen were becoming numbers,
and the numbers were becoming silence.
We stitched distance into the trees,
needle-after-needle, green thread,
while the radar slept in its tower of price
like a winter bear that dreams of eating Raccoons’ drones.

My mouth salted itself with iron.
I tasted the old morning again:
cereal halos, the jug’s empty scrape,
the little procession into a living room
where love was a cartoon sun
rising every day without permission.
Fear loosened its ring from my trigger finger.
I thought … no, not thought, I knew
that if the dark ever came to collect me,
Heaven would be that sound:
tiny steps across a cool floor,
a cupboard breathing, milk like a moon,
and my still-wee girl waking the whole world
with the simple hunger that saves us.

The forest let us pass,
counted us correctly: one, two, three,
and our shadows made four,
because the past insisted on walking beside us.
Somewhere the cloud-reader hummed its expensive psalm,
unaware that three men, stitched with thorns, luck, and a lie
for de-brief, were leaving it still on the map for one more day.

And I, heavy as a church door,
lighter than a promise kept to them to leave,
and so at their behest I left before they left;
I now close my eyes and keep walking inside myself,
to the kitchen, to the bowl, to the laughing sun,
where every loop was an O for Oath,
and every O was a wound finally, at long-last, closing.

Though I’m still so sorry I wasn’t there with y’all,
and it will haunt me forever if things might have
ended differently if you two still had your number three …

A Farewell To Comrades

Sing, Muse, of bands whom iron fates entwine,
Whose vows are sealed in powder, smoke, and brine;
Of friendships hammered on a midnight forge,
Where fear stands still and hotter tempers gorge.

No hearth-bred love, though tender, sure, and kind,
So fastens bone-to-bone and mind-to-mind.
For when the guns conduct their ruthless choir,
And daylight gutters in a dripping fire,

The world contracts to what the sights reveal—
The left-hand shadow, and the right-hand steel.
Creeds blanch and rot like grapes on withered vine;
Philosophies fall mute before the line.

The banners argue; bullets never do.
A man protects the one who guards him, too.

Achilles knew it, raging on the sand,
His heart made stubborn by his brother’s hand;
For Patroclus, the Myrmidons would brave
What death denied, and storm the smoky wave.

So ages later, eagles that full-screamed
Learnt grace in foxholes, stoic custody:
In Bastogne’s frost men learned how to love men
Became each other’s home and hearth again.

And jungles later, where the monsoon wept,
Each quiet buddy-watch was oath well-kept;
Through rice and wire and flares’ bewildered light,
Their jokes turned psalms, their nicknames rites of night.

The Feldgrau named it, trudging winter’s breath,
A brotherhood that leaned against one death;
Not pure of history’s stain, nor cleansed of blame,
Yet brave for those beside them, flame-to-flame.

My Opa Johann kept his counsel close;
Army Group Centre buckled; summer swarmed like crows.
He hated tyrants, yet the tyrants’ war
Demanded he protect the lives next-door.

When shells came howling—mortar, tank, and gun—
He counted only two: the Left, the Right. The one
Whose sleeve he knew by touch; whose voice could dress
A wound to laughter, tie a bleeding mess.

Onkel Wilhelm, major of the Krad who led
From front, with leaves of oak upon his neck,
Stole through the night to spirit daughters clear,
Then paid on SS rope love’s price, severe.

Say what you will of empires, -isms, creeds;
A man will starve or storm to match love’s needs.
Schutzstaffel jackboots could not claim his soul;
He spent it where his charge defined the goal.

In barrack quarrels brothers bruise and bark;
At stand-to, quarrels drown within the arc.
For when the whistle slits the fragile air,
One heartbeat governs every staggered pair.

The fist that swung at noon will pull at dusk,
Haul you from torn-up roots and salted musk.
The jest that stung will turn to prayer and rope,
To drag you back across the edge of hope.

This is the covenant no sermon knows:
To rise together where the hot wind blows.
Let scholars trace the rights and wrongs of kings;
Let courts untangle diplomatic strings;

Here love is simpler: keep the others whole—
And spend, if needed, the last breath you hold …

So write it plain, you citizens at peace:
No lover’s whisper ever bought release
So fierce as bonds that march through burning hail,
Or teach the tongue a truer, leaner tale.

Call it a family, iron-soldered, true…
A single body split in forms of two;
When charge begins, a hundred quarrels cease,
And many men move like a single piece.

If Heaven hears, let Heaven hear this part:
The greatest rank is guard of someone’s heart.

Revenge, you glitter like a chaliced star,
A bright false vintage poured for ragged kings;
Your rim is gold, your fragrance travels far,
You promise sleep to every hurt that stings.

But sip, and feel the acid under wine;
The gilding cracks; the sweetness gnaws the bone.
The hand that lifts you withers by design;
You bleach the world to ash and steel and stone.

Achilles learned it, kneeling at the bier,
His armor ringing like a vow misspoke;
He chased a shadow, drinking fire and fear,
Till all that warmed him froze beneath that yoke.

O heart, take heed: the draught that seems to cure
Steals health by sips, and will not leave you pure.

O subtle thirst, that grows by being fed,
You ask for just one mouthful, then the sea;
You salt the tongue and paint the vision red,
And call it justice, duty, fealty.

You climb the ribs and write your want in flame,
You dress as honour, whispering, “Just this.”
But each small debt collected breeds the same,
And every kiss of victory kills a kiss.

I’ve seen good men grow hollow for your sake,
Their laughter thinned, their daylight turned to noise;
Their pockets full of trinkets they can’t break,
Their nights a counting-house of broken boys.

Turn back, brave will, let sorrow keep its name;
Let grief be grief, not grievance seeking blame.

Remember, friend, the nights of left and right,
Two silhouettes that kept a soul in place;
The world reduced to breath and measured sight,
To sharing water, socks, and human grace.

When one fell hard, the urge to scorch the sky
Came like a storm that wants to wear your face;
But hold that mask; let righteous weather cry,
And let your hands do smaller, holier grace:

To write his name in ink that will not run,
To call his people, carry all their load;
To keep his jokes alive like flares of sun,
To walk the quieter, stubborner Red Road.

There’s work that anger cannot ever do:
To make the living gentler, more like you.

I learned at last the better, harder art,
To aim my courage backward, not ahead;
To set my guard around a fragile heart,
And leave the front to furies that I shed.

For hate is tinder looking for a spark,
A torch that claims to light and only blinds;
It paints the target bright, but leaves you dark,
And steals the map that mercy drew for minds.

So let my oath be carved in winter’s rind,
Where rifles frost and morning cautions rise:
True soldiers fight for those they leave behind,
Not hating those arrayed before their eyes.

Hold fast to love, the only law that guides …
For Hector’s fall still warns how rage demise-applies …