Grief seeps forward.

“… cured now, lifting up where their prior state refused …”

Enjoy this poem as a broadside by dragging the image to your desktop to read or print — or scroll down to read in plain text.

The War Dead in France

–

Perhaps what’s left of all those young dead, ghosts,

finds lost time as a region’s champagne bubbles —

–

cured now, lifting up where their prior state

refused (it’s hard lying down before your time,

and harder still trying and getting back up) —

–

to pass nobly through one more execution,

a first and second controlled fermentation

that’s softer this time. When we’re not weeping

–

I see ghostly shadows in different forms,

sometimes human, sometimes wine, sometimes a song.

Small spheres rise as music — joy or escape

–

for us, and for them. As death cures, one life,

carbon and oxygen, electrons shared, rises,

and love and tears intermingle with the past.

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A retired geology professor, Julian Green has published work in Indian River Review.