Protection

This week's prompt from Velvet Verbosity is the word protection. The challenge is to write excactly 100 words on this topic, in any form you like. I find this challenge is a lot of fun, and different words draw very different responses from me. In this case, for those who don't understand the poem, I'm illustrating it, below, with a photograph of the place I had in mind, Fort Warren, on Georges Island out in Boston Harbour.

Protection
Sturdy walls of stone
Withstanding cannon’s recoil,
Shouldering dense green thickets,
Yet marked by something slight
As passing moments.

Amidst great guns firing,
Roaring deadly defiance,
Massive blocks of granite
Stood unshaken.
Beneath spreading roots
In thick soil awaiting hostile reply,
Roofs bear up unsagging.
Unyielding fortress,
Silent now,
Worn.
Not expected cataclysms of war,
Only time’s unceasing footfalls
Conquered island bastion.

Once blocking enemy ships
Astride harbour approaches.
Turning aside even thoughts
Of attack.
Now ignored, overflown
By aircraft, time’s little joke
On designers, builders.

Vital protection,
Outdated, abandoned;
Monument
To simpler years.
What bulwark can repel
Passing time?