All our fathers and uncles
going off to war
like going down to the pub.
Whirled away like paper dolls
painstakingly cut from khaki
by little girls,
confetti men tumbling
into rice paddies, into names
like Kokoda and Nui Dat.
See them scatter into the twigs
into the puddles, the rivers
into the villages
folding up clouds of nightmares,
locking them away in a green
metal box with a yellow lid,
bivouacked in dust
in the corner of the loft
– I can hear them stirring.
In memory of Ian Harris (1946 – 1994)
A Dark Feathered Art 