between the battle-lines (as i ponder'd in silence)

i do feel myself tooled through words
that would press and probe the mettle of me
to stamp me with indelible tooth
in a loose cross-weave, like a gunny-sack
for hauling grain to the front line
across a battlefield full of grand stagings
lost in the splash and panache of history, which i see
pools like blood in the furrows

and i am made whole by the rending
gut-shot and impaled
it is only the ghost of me that loses her skin
while the essence, trapped in the castle-keep
is loosed to greet the smoldering dawn
to meet her demise, her final dissolution
in the boundlessness that lies beyond
all fields of endeavor

and isn't it ever thus?
that we live and die by the word
as well as by the sword
and need the warriors who flick steel from their pens,
for the spewing of epics from roiling deeps
where heart and mind, body and soul
clash for supremacy
all thundrous proclamation
and armor-piercing diction
to quiver those boots mired in bedrock,
knowing only the mundane path
to ordinary victory and defeat
which passes ignobly between the lines
of unuttered truth, and freedom
those merest of glimmerings from the silence
between volleys of harsh retorts
and thundering lies....