Barefoot Soldier

Met a man on a bus the other evening, who called me by my name, and told me complimentary things about my album
"Pretty Brown". When you have sung in public a lot and have made records of your music, this kind of thing happens and
you "go with the flow". What he really needed to talk about, this night, however, was not my music, but his divorce. He said he'd been in court earlier that day for a hearing about it, and that he'd been crying a lot since the process started. After we'd talked for a while, he reached inside a coat pocket, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and asked me to read it. It was a letter to his ex-wife saying how sorry he was for his part in their break-up. In it he even called her a tender name and at no point blamed her for anything. I was touched by what he was telling me, and tried to say things that might be of consolation to him, but also knew that what he was going through, was not likely to be helped much, by my words or anyone else's. I was also reminded of a song I wrote many years ago, that used images and words associated with war, from start to finish. I almost called it "The War of Love", until I found a subtler name for it right at the end of the chorus, which is: "And love is the song when the battle is done...the dance when the war is all over...and love is a warrior his face to the sun...and love is a barefoot soldier". I wished him well as he said goodbye, but I knew that on this overcast night, I was looking at one more "barefoot soldier", and hoping he would find his way safely through the fields of war, he was still stumbling through..........Quester.