local_library On the March

by Jack Harvey

Published in Issue No. 257 ~ October, 2018

It’s a long high fly,

going, going,

the slow army,

elephants and all,

from the Alps descending,

going deep towards the belly button,

the breadbasket of Rome.

 

Along the Trebia flats,

the shores of the Trasimene,

Roman soldiers fell in droves,

legion by legion,

covering the ground

like the glittering leaves of autumn

or driven to drowning in the lake;

the silent uncaring water

swallowed them whole.

 

Fabius Cunctator, old and wily,

waiting in the wings,

patient for the reckoning;

but not his turn,

not his time;

 

Hannibal marches on.

 

account_box More About

Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Bay Area Poets’ Coalition, The University of Texas Review, The Piedmont Poetry Journal and a number of other on-line and in print poetry magazines over the years. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies. The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, N.Y. He was born and worked in upstate New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired.