Gone

Dusk silkened the field with shadow,

ploughed waves along the carved land

caged in with fences,

moonlight and fresh indigo air.

Morning would bring gold

to set sheaves of wildflowers

shaking their petal-jewels

like tears onto the rich ground

barely hiding clothed bones,

flesh dissolved long ago.

Three families - guns held to faces

caught in shock and fear -

were hustled to summer's space,

battered to their knees in shivering grass,

bullets catching birdsong as it flew,

shrieking from trees, ancient witnesses

to the massacre of three generations

gone to graves with lives unlived

flowing red from their veins.