Death Bells

• Kaitlyn Dickson, Grade 11
• Poetry
• 2019

On a dark and stormy night, or once upon a time?
How to start a story with a sound the death bells ringing chime.
When soldiers came marching home from fighting overseas
I wondered quietly to myself, why they seemed so ill at ease.
When I discovered that they saw the enemy in fireworks or shadowed trees,
I pitied all the soldiers, who returned from overseas.
And then I found an old homeless man who had demons in his eyes,
he’d seen the horror of war, heard the death bells ringing chime.
I had to watch him fade away
from cold and malnourished conditions,
but what was worse was knowing that he fought,
and in the process gave up his own ambitions.
He gave me a chance to live free of the enemy
forcing me to live as they demand,
but we left him to fade in life, fear clutching him in its hands.