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Contests : War Poetry Contest : Past Winners : 2004 : William Conelly
R & R
He came from war zones to the sea,
Its pouring out and pouring back,
Its loose and slow monotony.
Along the fringe, where sight could reach,
Clay lands had broken to a wrack
As fine as salt to make a beach,
And ocean was suffused with sky,
A sky like water, vast and slack,
His vision could not occupy.
Arrayed in both, a monstrous sun
Swam through the empty zodiac
Defining many lights as one.
*
Why he was there he could not say.
His purpose and a simple knack
For travel ended where he lay,
And waited, without shade or shelter,
To hear the slight incoming smack
Of waves, their drag away from swelter;
As if external warmth could build
An inner source he'd grown to lack
When choices meant good people killed;
As if this hot reductive shore
Could temper or refine him back,
Before the peace, before the war.
This poem was a finalist in the 2004 War Poetry Contest sponsored by Winning Writers. Copyright is reserved to the author.
About William Conelly
After my years in the Air Force, I took a Master's Degree in English under Edgar Bowers at the University of California, Santa Barbara. I have published a few poems a year, both in the US and the UK, since the mid '80s and am currently a tutor in the Open Studies program at the University of Warwick, UK. Three of the previous four years I worked as an adjunct professor at Westfield State College in Westfield, Massachusetts. I'm married and have three sons.
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