Draft in the author’s style. This poem was written for Poet in the Battlefield to sit beside the author’s own readings, and is waiting for the author’s review. The commentary is a working draft too.
When the guns fell silent on the ridge, the medic ran through the smoke,
With a satchel and a lantern and a heart that never broke.
She knelt beside the fallen, whether friend or foe or stranger,
For the wounded knew no colours, only the pain and the danger.
Her hands were quick with bandages, her voice was calm and low,
She said, stay with me, soldier, for I will not let you go.
There were those she saved by dawn and those she could only hold,
And she wept for both in silence, for the young and for the old.
They gave her no medal for it, and her name was never told,
But the men she carried homeward remembered her like gold.
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Commentary
The medic is the quiet hero of every battlefield. This ten-line poem follows one who kneels beside anyone who is hurt and asks nothing in return.
When “the guns fell silent on the ridge, the medic ran through the smoke” with “a satchel and a lantern and a heart that never broke.” She “knelt beside the fallen, whether friend or foe or stranger,” for “the wounded knew no colours.” Her voice is “calm and low” as she says, “stay with me, soldier, for I will not let you go.”
“There were those she saved by dawn and those she could only hold,” and she “wept for both in silence.” She received “no medal,” and her name “was never told,” but the men she carried “remembered her like gold.”