Longtime Winning Writers subscriber and Reiter’s Block reader Hank Rodgers sent me this moving poem whose orderly formal scheme offsets the chaos of a veteran’s PTSD. Written a few years ago, it remains timely as the US continues to wage costly and unnecessary wars around the world. For more of Hank’s work, check out “From the Album” and “Fishing” in the archives of the Winning Writers Critique Corner.

Thorn Blossoms

We Seals, in our wet, black suits,
Were going in, again.
Boots on the ground, these thorns have roots,
Our nurtured, prickly men.

Commandos were his avatars,
In his dark, locked bedroom.
Virtual man now, one of ours;
His mind a barbed-wire loom.

He turned on us, when we’d trained him—
Our enemy had gone.
Some other prize our eyes, again,
We sponsors focused on.

We knew his games, his nettled angst
Had made him strange; and thus
We could not have him in our ranks—
He turned our guns on us.

We had to keep them in the cloud,
To make them talk, or scream;
While you, with shoes off, heads well-bowed,
Found flying, safe, your dream.

We tried to bring our ‘normalcy’,
Our arms, and faith, to him;
Make real our failed reality,
False hopes abounded, then.

Our droning Doctor zoned us in;
We fought, with little fuss.
That’s how we got our bin Laden,
And how, then, he got us.

We count our dead, and all for what
Our hubris has denied;
We’ve earned, and wear, our thorn-crowns; but
Too many bled, and died.