A night

We walked much of the night,
with the moon providing light.

We were lucky that it was this bright
and that white birch trunks shone.

We walked along the railroad tracks
all through the resounding night,

and there’s hardly a lonelier feeling
than the one I recall from that night

after the war, with occasional
gunfire far away somewhere

and not a train, not a soul
on the run with us that night,

scuttling along in the foreign night,
hungry, thirsty, cold, shoes holey,

surrounded by the blue night,
not knowing where the morning

would bring us to light.

– Niebla

Not my own memory, but borrowed from my mother’s stories from 1944/45, upon which I improvised in a somewhat ghazal-like form. Posted for Sunday Scribblings.