What makes you feel nostalgic?

I am not sure that nostalgic is the right word. I think of Robbie Burns with his “man’s inhumanity to man” and I realize that “the war to end all wars” never ended anything. It only started a series of new cycles. I am certainly not nostalgic for these endless cycles of violence and inhumanities. I am though nostalgic for man’s humanity to man, that spark of kindness and good will that seems, on the last day of the old year, with the new year about to come in, to have vanished. Could it be forever? I certainly hope not. May the new year (2024) bring peace, happiness, love, and understanding, to all the human beings on this tiny planet we, of necessity, share.

My friend Moo’s painting (above, thank you Moo), has for its title Fiat Lux – Let There Be Light. I am nostalgic for that light. May it soon return to our world.

Remembrance Day
11 November 2023

I wasn’t there
I never saw the gas clouds
            rolling over our positions
            never felt the barbed wire’s bite
            nor the bayonet’s jab

I never hung out my washing
            on the Siegfreid Line
            (“Have you any dirty washing, mother dear?”)
            never broke out of barracks
            never did spud bashing
            nor feasted on bread and water
            nor heard the rifle’s rapid rattle

I wasn’t there
            to see them carried away in carts
            coughing spluttering vomiting
            or bandages over their eyes
            walking slowly to triage a hand on
            the shoulder of the man ahead
            the sighted leading the blind

I wasn’t there
            but both my grandfathers were
            both decorated
            one mentioned in dispatches
            signed by Winston Churchill
            that one uninjured
            the other one gassed
            coughing up his lungs
            bit by bit for forty years

I am here now
    to remember
    and to honor them
           though so much
    has been lost