Credit Suzanne Olivante for the image prompt.

For today’s prompt, take the phrase “Battle (blank);” replace the blank with a word or phrase; make the new phrase the title of your poem; and then, write your poem. Possible titles include: “Battle Tested,” “Battle of the Sexes,” “Battle of the Bands,” and “Battle of the Bulge.”

Battle with Time

The tombstones remind me of clocks
ticking so slowly the hands seem fixed.
This cemetery has lost its battle
with the forest and time.

The stone wall was breached by fallen trees.
Crape myrtle advanced along the ground
while the oaks dropped bombs of acorns
and snuck roots behind enemy lines.

I am fighting a war of attrition
and losing. I will be forgotten,
all engravings worn away
by the relentless wind and rain

but walking through overgrown graveyards
in the woods is always time well spent.