They wrote it all down. The good (not much of that),
the bad (though with surprisingly little judgment),
and the ugly (so, so much of that). 

They recalled the local boys who went from zero to hero
just by donning a uniform,
the surreal images of those same boys
heading off to war by the trainload,

the newfound responsibilities of keeping up the homefront,
the thrill of stepping out of constrictive roles:
flexing freedoms, flexing muscles, revealing capabilities;
still a wife, a sister, a nursemaid, a supportive prop,
but now also a train conductor, a delivery driver, a farmer.

They spoke of the loneliness, the longing, the yearning,
the carnal lust (“the wild cave-woman spoke”);
outgrowing the “good girl,” the “good wife” roles,
the soldiers, briefly passing by on their way to something
horrible or coming back from something horrible,
more than willing to fulfill the women's desires, 
allay their fears, divest them of their virginity. 

They described the ubiquitous mud of the battlefields, 
how it turned uniforms brown (“the new style of clothing…
the chic of mud”), 
how it disabled firearms, swallowed up artillery, drowned soldiers. 

They told of the homecomings, the soldiers  
no longer soldiers, the bodies no longer breathing,
the heroes who would rather not have been,

the mothers who weren’t mothers 
when their men went to war,
the sainted helpmates who became whores in the 
eyes of unforgiveness, of hypocritical judgment,
the fatherless children left to be raised by mothers
who could no longer hold the jobs 
the men now reclaimed.

They sat opposite the empty chairs,
where their partners in life once sat. 
They regretted scoffing at the the local boys in crisp new uniforms
who became soldiers, who became heroes, who became 
disillusioned, haunted shells of men. 

They suffered loss, but did not suffer bullet wounds,
they sacrificed all but received no medals.
They rose to the challenges but were shoehorned back
into their stifled caricatures of weakness and dependency
once deemed no longer needed in the workforce.

God bless the soldiers who fought for freedom and justice.
God bless the women who fought for stability and sanity.
God bless the female poets who lived it all 
and wrote it down so that we – a century later –
might understand. 

It’s National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)!

Day Sixteen prompt from NaPoWriMo.net: write a poem in which you respond to a favorite poem by another poet. Not quite on prompt today. In looking for a poem to use (as I have no favorite), I found myself falling down a rabbit hole of female poets writing about WWI. Stark, moving poems depicting all facets of the war from a woman’s perspective.

A Sampling of Poems written by women about World War One:

War Mothers ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57317/war-mothers

August 1914 ~ Vera Mary Brittain
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57299/august-1914-56d23aac2477c

from At the Somme: The Song of the Mud ~ Mary Borden
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57329/at-the-somme-the-song-of-the-mud

After the War ~ May Wedderburn Cannan
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57365/after-the-war

August 1914 ~ May Wedderburn Cannan
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57362/august-1914-56d23ace66a9d

War Girls ~ Jessie Pope
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57296/war-girls

The Veteran ~ Margaret I. Postgate 
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=12&issue=5&page=10

I Sit and Sew ~ Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52759/i-sit-and-sew