Across a ruined countryside, imagine
gunfire, blasts, and dead men’s cries.
Across this barren deathscape,
a mother with her children flies.

Running between broken walls,
she guards and guides the way.
Unless they can escape this land,
they will all die this day.

She leads them past the blasting ground,
and hides their eyes from bleeding men.
Almost out, they pass the front,
she puts them in the bunker, then

a shot rings out, pure and true.
She steps back, then forward fast;
slumps, crumpling. But in her death,
her children now may last.