{poetry}

Storming a Beach

There was a time we broke on through
Against a tide of rising guns
And I was falling next to you
Forever earth from mother's sons

It wasn't bravery, that ghoul
Just a thing that must be done
Like children trudging off to school
Against the light of rising sun

With sea behind and guns ahead
There's only one place left to go
Like birth we're dropped and soon we're dead
On sands by sea where we're brought low

And here we climb against the earth
And here we rise up from the sea
We fall out of the salty berth
And storming find that there's a we

A field of lilies sways in wind
But each lives on a single stem
A whiteness in the darkness pinned
To earth but never once to them

Yet here we watch the petals fall
To blood and darkness at our feet
To wonder till we join them all
Why that child's heart will never beat

Why storming forward on that day
Just because we had to win
Meant that one lily's blown away
To silence with the hellish din

The wind between the flowers makes
Some tiny noise amid the peace
Of loneliness that somehow shakes
The petals to their last release

Just because it must be done
Just because the battle's won
Our roots are always out of reach
But when we must we storm a beach

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