Fun For All (Poetry)

November brings uneasy, nervous nights
where silence shatters randomly; harsh lights
pierce the curtain’s grey, protective gloom
and search the contents of a sleeping room.

A shell-fire-haunted soldier, shocked awake,
cowers as the walls and windows shake;
for one heart-stopping moment, fears he’s back
on duty in the dugout, dodging flak.

An anxious widow searches for her cat
who vanished, terror-struck, the moment that
the mortar shook their neat, suburban home
and left her shaken, worried and alone.

A nursery erupts with frantic cries;
distractedly, a pale-faced woman tries
to soothe her baby’s fears, its protest shrill,
subsiding to low sobs, but sleepless still.

Outside the shadows flicker; torches gleam
as fizzing fireworks rocket, bang and scream;
and land mines detonate — their tremors run
and frighten in the careless name of fun.

Cordite lends the air a bitter tang —
smoke and leaf-rot smells together hang
with subtle undertones of raw-edged fear
as Nature hides and waits for the all-clear.