Adventure summoned like a morning trumpet,
The clarion sound sang brilliant and brittle,
Commanding snap attention,
With vibrato that bent uncertain.

Flying away,
To pursue the future.
Pushing away the cloud and smoke,
As though swimming freestyle through the pool.

The disappearing dot,
Motions eagerly across the horizon, 
And beyond both eye and ear.
He has gone.

A camouflaged uniform deceives,
Like the wallaby hiding among the rocks.
In that assumption found and grasping hope,
A long wait begins and motions without sound.

Believing and wondering, 
Drowning anticipation of tomorrow’s sky,
Screaming at the Ecclesiastes dot that is no longer there,
And inhaling the nightmare prayer.

The drone of technology is a vicious servant,
Punching holes in the earth and exposing all who claim safety,
Calculated and precise, sniffing out its prey,
Those found are obliterated into an early grave.
 
Never found, 
Nothing to hold or see, 
Absent, 
Missing.

Terror insists control,
Only to dump the soul in Hades anger,
Who but Orpheus can enter that realm, 
And row my son home?

The willow leans upon the corridor wall,
Lonely and observing passers by.
His cap protrudes from on top the stand,
Without a head to shape its home.

Grabbing at the thinning air, 
And wielding a deadened heart, 
Throw it at the Ypres salient, 
To where his body somewhere lays.

The blue sky mocks those who are fallen,
And those who remain glare at its endless cheerful derision.
It is forever stained with red,
A graffiti fit for a missing tomb.

Can mortal men be consoled by immortal God?
A Father to the lost and missing?
Our hands emptied, no grasp is felt, 
Might a gracious Father welcome them home?

‘For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’