Hey, it’s the day of the Blood Moon…one of horror… for those with lingering feelings.
Or an old soldier with lingering feelings for battles that once were.
But let’s remind him–we’re never too damned old to think of something new.
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“I’m too young to feel this damned old.”
Alone, in a rundown backyard that hadn’t been tended in years. The sky was–a thing of beauty. Blood seemed to trickle from the weeping willow of a moon–echoes of the heart. A cold breeze graced the neck–wonder if it remembered. The sky was too alive–that Garth song wanted it tamed.
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Sounds of what seemed like gunfire–or a military drill at a nearby airbase. Then, bright, vibrant sparks consumed the skyscape.
Flashes in the sky, or just tricks of the mind, triggered by a moon in blood red?
The mind certainly whirred—a comrade-in-arms, cut down by tracer fire. The night burned, along with the flames in the sky.
The echo of boots on wet metal was all too audible. A single red streak across an endless black canvas. The piercing whistle of the cold wind, meeting its fire. Back on the ridge, twenty-three, hollow…and that Garth Brooks song.
Dragging a fractured mind forward to an unwanted time.
Echoing.
“I’m too young to feel this damned old.”
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But old it was. The body had started creaking a few months back. A haunted mind –pitch black, against the flaming orange sparks of gunfire that once were.
That once were.
The orange sparks danced. The heart still aches–too painful.
That could never be again. But these creaking legs still carry an old man wanting his guns.
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Yes. Too young to feel this damned old.
The moon above was bleeding–too much–and the same blood trickled from my ribs. Bullets lodged during two tours of Korea and one of Vietnam.
Ones missed–too strangely.
The orange sparks blended with the stars, becoming a flickering Van Gogh canvas–a poignant reminder of the comrades left behind.
The sky didn’t care. The song still played—faint. Too true.
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Two tours of Korea. One of Vietnam.
Still here.
Still counting the countless stars years younger than the frame.
A frame still younger than the dead.
The moon in the sky still bleeds..and Garth Brooks still haunts.
Too young to feel this damned old.
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