I Will Bake A Cake Poem by Chris Zachariou

My darling son,

there is a cry for war
across the land
by those who have no sons
and it calls for you to fight.

We wave goodbye
then I see the gun
across your shoulder
and I nearly die.

My darling son,

when the war is over
and the guns fall silent,
when there is peace
over our ravaged land,
I will bake a cake;
we will sing, we will dance
and we shall eat the fatted calf.

Forty years have flown by
and the young soldier
has not come home yet

until one day in March
a truck rolls into town carrying
the missing soldier's bones.