Poets Against War continues the tradition of socially engaged poetry by creating venues for poetry as a voice against war, tyranny and oppression.

Ed Harkness

55 years old
Shoreline, WA 98133

I was raised in Seattle. I am a Vietnam-era conscientious objector.

The Day the War Began

I split a few pine rounds,
stacked them between a pair
of small just-yellowing aspens.

A quail watched from a bare
elderberry limb. For an hour
the tang of cut pine

lingered in the evening air.
I changed the well pump filter.
In the last light

I followed elk tracks
down the needle-strewn trail
to the river. A bull and cow—

their prints written in sand
along the shore.
Somehow I had missed them

as they passed browsing
among the cottonwoods
before they entered the current.

I was aware of nothing
but the pale smell of wild roses,
and the river breathing so faintly

I could hear my own heart
whisper
not again not again not again.

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