A Soldier

By Doug Soderstrom

Not a sacred warrior,

  Nor with a bayonet blessed by God,

Not even a human being,

  Just a simple peasant; a surrogate, 

  A sacrificial lamb, a frightened child,

  Chosen by the rich to be an instrument of war,

A cold-blooded, battle-trained beast,

  A mindless savage ordered to kill,

A molded piece of steel, an object . . . a gear,

  A very small cog in a far-reaching engine of death,

  An insignificant fleck in the overall fabric of life,

A negligible notch on the handle of an enemy's gun,

  A mere afterthought for those who extol the wonders of war,

  An unkempt grunt,

  A lonely gutted, blood-spattered corpse lying on the ground,

  Something like the trivial crush of dead dog on a lonely country road,

  Dead meat . . . with a tin tag,

A sacred breath of life having been stripped from its mother's womb,

  A father's pride; his very best friend,

  Someone whose name is Abdul, Mohammed, Ishmael, Ibrahim, or Hassan,

  Or then again . . . perhaps even Mike, John, Mark, Eddy, Ben, or Bill,

  A world diminished by the loss of another precious child!

September 2004

Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D., is professor of psychology at Wharton County Junior College in Wharton, Texas. He may be reached by email at dougsod@wcjc.edu .