ABPA - Australian Bush Poets Association

Drone

The shrouded travelers cross the desert sand
As other eyes watch from a distant land.
She knows among these tribesmen walk the foe,
But which are they? And can the watcher know?
As one they raise their eyes towards the sky;
A speck of dust, it drones far off and high,
Just like a bird but somehow not the same,
Then from it comes a flash, a spurt of flame.
The predator has marked its target well
And from its maw it spits the fires of hell.
The guilty and the innocent alike
Have but an instant left before the strike.

And at her console continents away
She rises from her task at end of day
And to her home along the highway drives;
The soldier who from safety takes men’s lives.
She runs a bath and there reclines to soak;
Tries to forget the carnage and the smoke.
The action carried out with good intent,
But doubts of what’s been done will not relent.
The button pressed, the missile gone – too late!
Once it is launched it can’t discriminate.

© Dennis N. O'Brien, 2012

That's a good write Dennis and from another viewpoint which is an interesting one - with the modern technology that we have these days the weapons of destruction are fired from somewhere not even close to where the war is.

I wonder if the advent of all the arcade games and video games of war that this generation has grown up with makes the job easier? Less real as it were. Do they perhaps???? view with a degree of surrealism the targets they are zoomed in on with such pinpoint deadly accuracy, perhaps relating to the screen in front of them with the same degree of nonchalance that they did the video games they played on home computers when they were kids?

I found it interesting though undoubtedly accurate that the MC predator in your poem is a female. That in itself is a modern take of warfare as it is today where women also take their place in the front line.

Brilliant poem Dennis. Almost the same concept as mine but perhaps more clear and pertinent to today's modern warfare. Love the female character, a touch of genius!

Thanks Maureen and Vic.

Yeah, don't know that I would call a control center in the US
the front line exactly, but a fair percentage of the predator drone
"pilots" are women - I guess they can operate a track ball or a mouse
as well as a man can.
People will be getting battle honours without having to leave the air conditioned office.

Ground robots are another interesting development of modern warfare that
are going ahead in leaps and bounds (literally). I wrote
a poem about them sometime back - will post one day.