A Soldier
Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D. wrote this poem September 5, 2004, reflecting on the "dilemma of war facing the two candidates running for the presidency of this country." Dr. Soderstrom believes that those who chooses to read this poem "will stop 'in their tracks' and perhaps, if for just a moment, to consider the relentlessly brutal nature of war, and how it is destroying the most precious resource on our planet -- that of the lives of our children!"
Not a sacred warrior,
Nor with a bayonet blessed by God,
Not even a human being,
Just a simple peasant….. a surrogate,
A sacrificial lamb, a frightened child,
Chosen by the rich to be an instrument of war,
A cold-blooded, battle-trained beast,
A mindless savage ordered to kill,
A molded piece of steel, an object……. a gear,
A very small cog in a far-reaching engine of death,
An insignificant fleck in the overall fabric of life,
A negligible notch on the handle of an enemy’s gun,
A mere afterthought for those who extol the wonders of war,
An unkempt grunt,
A lonely gutted, blood-spattered corpse lying on the ground,
Something like the trivial crush of dead dog on a lonely country road,
Dead meat……..with a tin tag,
A sacred breath of life having been stripped from its mother’s womb,
A father’s pride……..his very best friend,
Someone whose name is Abdul, Mohammed, Ishmael, Ibrahim, or Hassan,
Or then again……..perhaps even Mike, John, Eddy, Ben, or Bill,
A world diminished by the loss of another precious child!