War Poetry: Shrouded in Midnight

by Luke Ryan

Side by side we sat
In the belly of a bird
Made of steel parts and iron men
Who cut their teeth on brimstone long ago.

We flew together
Heading to a wretched place
Where wretched men
Hid among beautiful and timeworn mountains.

 Our futures were shrouded in midnight,
And we did not know the path that lay before us.

Would we step into the Afghan dirt and tread through tilled-up farmlands?
Would it be a quiet night as we crept into the home of our enemy
And caught him before he woke?
Would he exit with hands raised and eyes lowered?
Or would we find little more than an empty room and a broken motorcycle?

Our futures were shrouded in midnight,
And we did not know the path that lay before us.

Would we stumble upon a larger operation?
Would we find prisoners or stacks of rifles?
Would we enter a room that smelled of diesel?
And that deadly combination of fertilizer?

 Our futures were shrouded in midnight,
And we did not know the path that lay before us.

Or perhaps we would be greeted with an eruption of gunfire,
The flash of a muzzle or the heat of an explosion.
Perhaps in a matter of minutes we would see the blood of our brothers
Spilled among the blood of a shooter,
Who died with malice on his breath.

We sat together on that bird of steel,
Under the stars and over the mountains.
The minutes dwindled down until the wheels touched the dirt,
And we placed our boots onto Afghan soil.

Whatever fate that midnight held,
We knew that we would meet it together
And that was enough for us.

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Luke Ryan is a former Army Ranger from 3rd Ranger Battalion and an American poet and author. He has written The Gun and the Scythe, a book of war poetry which can be found here.

This first appeared in The Havok Journal on April 29, 2019.