Writing Resources from Fifteen Minutes of Fiction

The Winter's War

The fallen lie along the road
Broken, bleeding, dying;
Casualties of the winter’s war,
In ditches as you pass them by.
The war was long and cold and hard,
Fought in deepest snow -
The trenches ready made
To hide from fearsome foe.
Guerrilla tactics: hide inside the very banks
Thrown up by the enemy,
Taking cover from slicing blades of death
Which come oh, so swiftly
With orange flash and muffled roar
To crush the lurkers in those banks,
And cutting down the army’s flags
Come wings of death to slay the ranks.
With each new storm and fall of snow
The casualties mounted;
The numbers slowly dwindling
'Til the lost could not be counted.
But now that spring has come to us
The battles become fewer.
Melting cover recedes,
Running to the sewer;
And the fallen lie along the road,
In broken pieces, life’s course run:
Your mailbox is now safe again,
The plow trucks have all gone.

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