I saw a battle field today
And I told the boys something simple about the dead –
Then, as they ran across the field and tumbled into the forest’s leaves,
I gazed blankly back in time to a book I’d read
The book pondered how soldiers put into words –
In their letters home – the sounds, the sights,
The hell they lived in whatever war. I feel that way, too,
When I try to describe even to myself the nights
I spend without you.