ON PATROL


 


  Surreal is the night
  in shadows,
  even air dares not
  to follow,
  lest a sound stirs
  in the hollows,
  wakes the guns
  that seek
  to bring us down,
  before we find them.
  Ring of sweat
  upon the snow,
  glistening there
  at twenty below.
  Every hush of sound
  a blare,
  every muffled cough
  a scare.
  Thirteen men in single file,
  avoid the ground
  where mines defile;
  frozen in their winter sleep,
  one may wake
  beneath our feet.
 

BY: JOHN KENT