Laying on a bed of late blooming flowers and yellow straws
I looked up and studied clouds formations.
Europe, The Far East and America
were linking fluffy arms with The Middle East
as they drifted indolently across a UN blue sky.

Then, in the undergrowth a snake hissed,
startled I got up, the breeze had a deep chill within,
clouds where now military hostile
and uniformly grey drifting miles apart.
On field long legged sheep grazed
unaware as, always,
that fall is slaughtering time.