Ripping Yarns - 10am 2018

In one hours time,
One hundred years ago,
The guns stumbled silent.
Time scratched its head at my question.

This would take some thought.

Rivers flow but one direction,
Branches grow but from the tree.
So why stop here and now for me?

I see my grandparents,
Long passed from my view,
Play in wild excitement
As children always do.

I see my great-grandfather,
Dead before I gasped my first,
Inhale victories of grateful breath
Through shell-corrupted lungs.

I see my great-grandmother,
Grateful for what had returned,
Weep privately with his wounds
And softly gasp for what he'd left behind.

I see my great great uncle.
The greatest of them all.
Laying buried and silent.
He echoes then. He echoes now.

Time scratched its head,
This would take some thought.
Who'd dammed its river
And changed its course?

Who pruned the branches
Back to the tree?
Who shrunk a century
Just for me?

Time scratched its head
This would take some thought.
The dead, the living,
The lives they fought.

Smoke and fireworks,
Smoke and battles,
Mixed up Time
But still death-rattles.

I see the whole century
Spread out for me,
Ripping yarns from coat-tails,
Which I should not see.

Time scratched its head
This would take some thought.

Time finally answered my question in no time at all.
I nodded.
I understood.
He hadn't stopped for only me
He'd stopped a nation for Memory.