Grey Sun Over Normandy

- by Holly Perril  *

1 remember the sun
ablaze in foreign skies. Too bright, too fierce, too familiar
to fall beyond the twisted wire. Burning bright sepia
like memory; those tainted photographs, branded in the grey
and bandaging the ruptured sky - healing the wounds ready
for home. The air hung heavy with silence,
once electric with ignition, sweltering in the heat of war but
now simmers with the white noise
on radios back home. Newspapers speak in empty words,
black print on greased white, falling from the page,
distorting an image of grey sun over Normandy.
Its light is distilled in the monochrome, pure,
sweeping dream-white across bruised skies; a divine
signature on the land claimed by no man.
I remember your letters, too sweet to be worn
by the rhythms of war, too fragile to be bleached
by the militarist light. Sickly perfume on the parchment
I kissed, as you had, without opening, I have them still.
The sky wrought with black smoke, the grey sun turns silver,
and you are in the stars; yet the light is not lost to us.
1 look to the grey sun; thinking: it is a great feat to remember
When this light was born; too late to judge when it will die.
I cling to the words you wrote, that I have not read,
and trace your fingertips along the crease of the
envelope.