photoart: sharon auberle
Trees at the Somme
by Alice D’Alessio
What you
notice first
is a
landscape without presence,
motion or
sound: a flat field,
a column of
trees.
The red-brown
soil buries
the cries of
dying soldiers,
the blood and
piss, the threads
of shredded
fabric, buttons
and matted
hair. The soil
that someone
tills each spring –
carving
parallel scars in a sterile field
too full of
cordite for anything to grow.
Time's
merciful silting thickens.
Only a small
brown hut
memorializes
this place
and the
trees, stark witnesses,
scarred by
stray bullets lodged in their flesh.
If they could
speak
to those who
come in awe
to those too
young to know;
could answer,
what was it like?
Just once,
would someone listen?
Or must we go
on tilling poison soil
planting
fields of sorrow.
~ first
published in A Blessing of Trees (Cross
+ Roads Press)
