OASIS By ... Steve Lucky

                OASIS
          By ... Steve Lucky

The soldier crawled through the scorching desert.
His body was bruised and covered with blood,
But his spirit was not broken.
Every movement he made was a struggle
For his very survival,
Yet something inside him refused to give up
The battle he had been fighting for so long.
As the hot sun continued to burn his back
And the hot desert sand burned his hands and knees,
He wondered if his commanding officer would even notice
The disappearance of a single soldier
Among the thousands of soldiers
Instructed to fight in one of the thousands of battles
In a war that looked like it would never end.
Frequency he wanted to stop and rest
To end the pain caused by his constant forward motion,
But he was experienced enough to know
If you stopped to rest during a war
You might never move again.
When all seemed lost, he spotted in the distance
An oasis providing both water and a place to hide.
Was it just a mirage?
There was only one way he could know for sure.
With all the strength he had left
He pressed himself on towards the object in the distance
That was getting ever closer.
As he got closer, he knew he oasis was real.
He had reached a point of relative safely
Where he could cool himself off, rest, heal his wounds,
And wait for help to arrive
Which he was confident would come.

Copyright 2001, Steve Lucky