Last Post

Climbing Benaughlin
On a curling bog road

The starlight blanched 

By cement works down below

Farting out aggregate 24/7

We passed a low stone shelf
Erupting from the peat

Flecked with the detritus

Of a visiting regiment's supper

The mysterious no-name biscuits

A fiddly little tin opener

Some warm fragments of hexamine

That recently fired a squaddy brew

A single boiled sweet, wrapped

Already mobbed by wood ants

These military artefacts

Are made incongruous

By their proximity to a red post box 

The mail still Royal in this district

If nothing else 

You could have your wee war here,

Wait for that red van

And write home about it by return

The solid truth of a letter

Your own careful legend

Having much more shape

Than the facts on the ground