Battle Cry: The Heart Thus Speaks Its Peace
There the soldier
In a trap of seconds
Greater than the trap of war that has put him there,
More terrifying than the enemy,
Waiting, watching,
Also trapped on the field of the unknown
Where all are equal, all are allies.
How important is this?
How important this is.
How profound not to miss
A single heartbeat
Counting down the seconds to when
The battle cry sounds
Loud and clear
In a voice
Not the soldier’s own
Until he hears it as his own, and
The trap of seconds instantly dissolves;
Time vanishes –
Past, present, future – all there;
Nothing to know or think,
Just do,
Drummed onward by the heart,
Which will never know a purer freedom than this
In beating out a repeating march of timelessness,
In reaching out
For some truth already in the hands of fate
Because the same truth has always been and been there before.
– Mary Jo Magar –