(Other) Casualties of War..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

A number of blog readers have expressed a wish to read some of my poems again, but don’t have access to my collections or time to browse my blogs. I have therefore started up a Google Plus site linking to new and historical posts/poems on booth bogs. The preamble to some posts may well be out of date, of course, but recent feedback suggests it doesn't bother anyone. Besides, readers can always skip the preamble and go straight to the poem.:

https://plus.google.com/118347623673930289606/posts

Now, much of human nature is about love and hate, finding peace and making war with ourselves as well as if not more so than with others. 

Among many wounds we inflict upon ourselves - and far too often leave to fester - I suspect that by far the greater are words spoken in anger that can never (quite) be retracted and words of love never spoken at all. More often than not, blame lies with a failure to communicate properly between the parties concerned; ironic, in a twenty-first century where communication has never been easier if also (perhaps for that very reason?) more vulnerable to misunderstandings and/ or misleading assumptions invariably down to expressing ourselves poorly or not at all..

When was the last time you told someone just how much you love and/or forgive them?

This poem is (yes, another) villanelle.

(OTHER) CASUALTIES OF WAR

So many words unsaid

on this life’s battleground,

comrades left for dead

False hopes seeing red,

warned not to make a sound;

so many words unsaid

Misgivings hastily shed

where love’s tears confound;

comrades left for dead

Truth but to history fed,

as better sought than found;

so many words unsaid

Honest mistakes misled

for hurt pride to compound;

comrades left for dead

Nature, by nurture misled

costs peace the upper hand;

so many words unsaid,

comrades left for dead

[From:  On the Battlefields of Love: poems by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2010]