War Images, An Exhibition, The Square, Guernsey 2010 - Trudie Shannon

Two old women stoop over handbags,
Dowagers prominent humps blessing alternative vision.
They gaze with opaque eyes at photographic images
Of war, in a foreign land.
Sunlight gleams on perspex distorting and distancing the photographs
Into dreamlike nebuli.
There is an absence of time, present here as
Bombs drop lucid memories into trapped screams
Upon furred tongues in dry mouths.
They do not stop for long, these Liberation witnesses.
They cannot dwell or cope with Revelations scars on other shores.
Suddenly cracked words break like waves in the heat haze.
"Is there a box"? she asks her friend
And rummages in her handbag for her purse
Suddenly the Blitz metal souvenir flies skyward
An acrobatic element glinting in its timeless beam of light.
They walk on, exhibition photographs bearing their reflections
Two old women walking between bomb sites in Afghanistan.

Trudie Shannon