THE SECOND WAR

MY GRANDFATHER, HARRY GIDEON AHLSTROM

I step off the edge of thought

I walk from dream to dream

I don't mind the weather

When the long black clouds come in

It reminds me of the place I was

When time came to a halt

The fiery sky

The ash and smoke

The guns when they went off

My hand, it went right to my heart

The only one who knew

How it feels when earth is falling

Fast away from you

When the bomb went off

I only grabbed what I could hold

Time is jelly

How it bends

How the end unfolds

The bridges, they go nowhere here

The clouds are shaped like angels

The sun, it sets in red

Just like the day

The bombs were falling

How I hate this dirty town

Covered in black soot

How I hate that time moves on

With all the things it took

My grandfather once told me

About the second war

In a dream, he took me there

Inside the bombed-out hull

He lived inside his head, he said

Such things, a man cannot forget

He carried in his hands that day

All that he could hold

He left the town that he was from

So many ghosts still hung around

He said he might be one of them

He walked between two worlds

Nothing here is permanent

And God, he is indifferent

I sit beside my grandfather

And watch the clouds go by

He spends more time in dreams these days

He said it's hard to stay awake

Time is such a lonely place

The long, black cloud comes down

When he stares, he drifts away

I see him gone for days and days

An astronaut, a man from space

I see him in my dreams.