Dux Bellorum

Steel-armored soul
Fragile as opal
Incendiary will
Forged of broken dreams
Phoenix burns
Destroyed to rise again
Light explodes
As fire in his gaze
Still surface
Deep currents swirl below
Child of Mars
Like gray-eyed Minerva
Sprung full-grown
From the mind of man

--Kellie Matthews
c. 1998