Still for reaping

    by Murray Alfredson

Wheelchaired batallions swell and swell apace,

those struck, not slaughtered in our road sport;

their blood was doubtless spilled, though not enough

to pay with lives.  They are the left ones by

our sacrificial games, the left and seen,

who body-imprisoned serve a lifelong lease.

The head-damaged also, slow of speech and thought,

word strugglers, some not even needing canes,

but robbed of half their mind and half their being,

they live among us, less visible their warning

to us who take our chances, saying we have

to die sometime, somehow, we who stay

attached to service of that deadly god.

© 2012  Murray Alfredson

Murray Alfredson has worked as a librarian, lecturer and in Buddhist chaplaincy. He is a prize-winning poet, has published essays and poems in Australia, England, and America, and a collection, ‘Nectar and light’, in Friendly Street new poets, 12, Adelaide: Friendly Street Poets and Wakefield Press, 2007.