Resurgence
by Holly Woodward
The sandstorm stumbles through the war,
fingering each new soldier’s face.
The longer you stay, the stranger you are--
the desert is a lonely place.
The sand remembers in its youth
that God once called it paradise
for a brief, clear moment of truth
before millennia of lies.
The dust checks the great army’s guns
and makes the vast truck convoys stall.
The sand’s cocksure such great weapons
couldn’t kill something so small.
The soldiers stand still, the ground shifts
like rough fortune under their feet.
Time burns and slows and falls in drifts,
one force that bombs cannot defeat.
The young men must learn to fight blind
through the grit that has caught our fall.
The sand is swirling clocks that time
cannot for all its might recall.
This once great land, now so broken
and burned to dust through ceaseless war,
rises as this strike has woken
some memory of life before.
The sandstorm covers every track
so each soldier must walk on alone,
and if he were to dare glance back
he’d see his tracks already gone.
fingering each new soldier’s face.
The longer you stay, the stranger you are--
the desert is a lonely place.
The sand remembers in its youth
that God once called it paradise
for a brief, clear moment of truth
before millennia of lies.
The dust checks the great army’s guns
and makes the vast truck convoys stall.
The sand’s cocksure such great weapons
couldn’t kill something so small.
The soldiers stand still, the ground shifts
like rough fortune under their feet.
Time burns and slows and falls in drifts,
one force that bombs cannot defeat.
The young men must learn to fight blind
through the grit that has caught our fall.
The sand is swirling clocks that time
cannot for all its might recall.
This once great land, now so broken
and burned to dust through ceaseless war,
rises as this strike has woken
some memory of life before.
The sandstorm covers every track
so each soldier must walk on alone,
and if he were to dare glance back
he’d see his tracks already gone.
Holly Woodward is a writer and artist. She served as writer in residence at St. Albans, Washington National Cathedral, and was a fellow for four years at CUNY Graduate Center’s Writers’ Institute. She enjoyed a year as a doctoral fellow at Moscow University. She also studied at Leningrad University and has an MFA from Columbia. Her poetry and fiction have won prizes from Story Magazine, 92nd Street Y, and New Letters, among other honors.