Poetic Thoughts from a Peacekeeper
In memory of Sergeant Robert Alan Short, 3 RCR, killed-in-action on 2 October 2003 in
Afghanistan; may heaven welcome all peacekeepers.
Peacekeeper
Children play, children smile,
you smile, you cry,
far away, your child,
your family plays.
Sleep under foreign skies,
walk on foreign streets,
friends die, people hate you
foreigner.
Peacekeeper is your label,
no peace to make, or wanted.
Mines wait silently, bodies fester.
Children laugh, children play,
at home a child says,
peacekeeper, and lays a flower on your
grave.
Deploying
When I go away, its never to stay
But I treat each day before I leave
Like it will be.
When they sleep, I wander around like
The ghost I will become. Drifting into rooms,
Into the places I have shared.
I Gently kiss them goodnight
And early next morn I leave – silently like a
Thief, with stolen memories to
Keep – until next time.
Dream
To touch the sun, to reach
the stars – they really don't
seem that far, do they?
In a desert under the blazing
sun, death stalks the innocent
whether by blast or gun
the soldier walks tall.
At night he dreams, he dreams
of peace – like trying to
touch a star, peace is a shadow
to the dogs of terror. It slips
through their fingers like the
hot desert sands.
by Terry Joseph Hamel
... who is a Canadian military loadmaster on active duty at an
undisclosed location, after serving on several peacekeeping
missions as a support trade in Kabul, Bosnia/Herzegovina,
Croatia, Mogadishu, Beladola, and Nairobi. This is his first
published work.
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