Hedge of Protection
by Spencer Barnhill
When Grandpa was a captain in the Marines
I assume he would pray for God’s protection
in Pendleton when Korea was burning
and likely soon to be above or below
his bootstrapped feet. You never know the day or
the hour that battle may call your soul from peaceful
predictable to M16, machete
and bomber plane infested territory
where stakes are high and lodged within the bodies
of those who fight for what is right or wrongly
believed as right. And if he prayed, “Protect
me God—the great I Am—i am but fallen
yet, weak, am strengthened by your love and mercy,”
then he—if called to fight—would’ve fought for glory.
For God-grown hedges, watered by man, are greenest.
Born and raised in Edmond, Oklahoma, Spencer is studying finance and English at Oklahoma Baptist University. He is an aspiring writer who loves long-distance running and meaningful storytelling, and will have poetry featured in Ekstasis, SLAB, and Outrageous Fortune.
