A Round of Cards

Suppose it then a battlefield like all battlefields,
where the sudden meets the many in mystery.

Shall it matter what year it was or the very place,
or that thousands engaged in a thousand wars?

But this has always been so, hasn’t it, just now,
how one learns how surgically simplified it all i

Perhaps a smell of fresh mown grass rising up,
May morning cannonade shaking daffodils.

How so ever it is within you it does shape us,
swimming down here at the bowl’s bottom.

Honor comes in all kinds of flavors and shades,
duty displayed with enigmas and emblems.

One would think that sewing perfected itself,
given all the insignia, battle flags and stripes.

Young men eager depart home as always,
some come back duty secured, some not.

“War is bullshit,” the old German told him,
“in Stalingrad we ate handfuls of dirt to survive.”

We name battlefields with whispers and pride,
as if we ourselves took a sniper round into ourself.

A young boy trembled with fear and memory,
standing in circled painting of death’s glory.

His memory, you see, came back in a flash,
knowing the day and the time he harshly died.

But war will do that, make boys into men,
sometimes into liars, cheats, and, yes, soldiers.

A sultan, a mystic and a Christian knight met,
once long ago in the dark of a starry desert night.

Just off and to the left, you might say today,
where knightly duties were being invented.

How these three came to be in such an inn,
such a night and the fast flowing cards winning!

The sultan’s father sent him, you see, for Shams,
and Veled always did as his father directed him.

He knew this was the whole of the point of living,
while Shams catches the young knight skimming.

This knight knew how, and what debauchery is,
shamelessly caught under a master’s loving gaze.


In a flash perhaps it all came to him, why he is,
all the sins on his head, and that he is a cheat.

What measure profoundly played here is this,
who is Shams and why does he do him this way?

Humility will come now or later, it’s our choice,
we always know the exact date and place of it.

Who we lied to, who we stole from, seeds spilled,
in the end, he realized, it was only from himself.

Shattered and awakened at once, he wept,
perhaps, but he offered to give it all back at once.

Shams, holding all the hearts, no doubt at all,
says, “keep it and take it to our friends in the West."

Abundance like this the boy had never seen,
the beggar acted as if he were surely a king.

And this over a wooden table in dim light,
in a far away place in the midst of battles.

Nothing has changed, or so it seems today
yet do we always know who is amongst us?

Is there an enemy out there to be killed,
or is it the deadly sins within us dying to die?

Whichever the fields of drama are always there,
guided it seems by men and women wiser than we.

And so they always find us, usually asleep,
maybe dreaming of girls with forgiving hearts.

Or of the recognition we work on ourselves,
only to realize we are panhandlers of spirit.

Could it be the game itself is transpired there,
with each hand something more is revealed?

Such as knight as this taken up by his enemy,
being loved and transformed in a single glance!

That we would we give this to our enemies,
that we would even given it to ourselves.

And so it was on a night long ago in Damascus,
when Francis of Assisi came in to a round of cards..


©John Kadela