Horizon

The air is tense, a muscle

at the edge of a starting line, waiting

for the gunshot.

You cannot know it is 1914 until

it is 1914 and a man dies, murdered,

setting off a chemical reaction

of treaties and troops and armaments,

and then when you know the year again

you and the world stand naked

on a battlefield rich with blood,

drained of life and identity and meaning.

We are going to get war again

and again and again and again,

so often we wonder 

where did they come from,

these memories of peace?

For we have been at war 

for as long as I remember.

Over the horizon light emerges;

only time tells whether it brings 

a new bomb, a new death,

or a new dawn, a new day.