Caged Canaries.

• Sophie Szalai, Grade 10
• Poetry
• 2018

I once sought cardinal skies and poppies stained with red, but never in my own eyes saw an image, a symbol to dread.

Weeks ago, in late april - marks the day my love and I marry. My girl is blonde and beautiful too; blonde like a dull canary.

I miss her, the sight and smell of home too. Home is not among the dead and dying, but to them we say ‘Adieu’.

She lays atop my heart, caged within a metal locket. Her canary light gives me hope when screams of men sky-rocket.

One bright, scorching, hot day, I am struck, many other men too.I lay within a blood-soaked bed, ‘till my eyes dawn upon a view.

A single caged canary - who sings such a beautiful tune. It’s there I clutch my locket and rush back to the platoon.

The skies are a cardinal red, complemented by trickles of dust. This is never what I’d planned to do, but we all know it’s a must.

Finally the whistle blows and I charge with the army ahead. I wince with pain from bleeding wounds and fall, once again with the dead.

Crimson soaks my locket from the place my one love rests. There’s the canary’s tune, echoing from her perch she once nest.