city photography

Windy rain

© Masalla Galleries 2004

April in Paris

It was Paris, 1941.
The rive gauche, the 7th arrondissement, on the rue Madeleine, in that tiny hotel des Pins, under the stairway - filled with the fragrance of tulip and the danger of war ...
We touched lips only a moment, you said au revoir but not goodbye ...
your chaleur still fires my lingering heart ........
Will you be there this April?

Therése, in the novel Ultimate Sacrifice
© 2000 R.C. Westerholm

city photography

Conversations

© Masalla Galleries 2005

Home is in the mind

Where Now is Home?
Where was Langvei? Was that the last hill?
Are we still in the valley of the shadow of death?
Where is Khesanh? Can we find it still?
Can we walk any longer? Is this our last breath?

Where now is home? To the north to the south?
The hooch in the jungle, the picket fence lane?
What words do I hear coming out of my mouth?
Are the sobs and the moans the sound of profane?

Tread on the button bombs or upon the death adder.
Take your cubes and your pills, what are they for?
In the combat of grunts, what does it matter
if anyone survives this paraplegic war?

Where does it end, this loathing of man?
How can we endure this continual pain?
Where can we say this turning began?
Pray to my God I’ll not pass here again.

Where now is home? Where now is home?

(war poem written by Nathanial in A Place in the Sky - Copyright R.C. Westerholm)