Dave Bonta's "Battlefield" starts with an odd, almost practical piece of advice: don't hug too hard in a tent, just keep warm at night. It sounds like a soldier's rule of thumb, but it also hints at how fragile closeness is when people are living side by side in war. Warmth is needed, yet it has to be held back.
Then the tone darkens. "We go to war / to lie with butchers" is blunt and bitter, suggesting that the people beside us, and maybe we ourselves, become part of the killing. The "green or blue / sound of the field" mixes colour and sound, which gives the landscape a dreamlike, uneasy feel. The last lines turn the ground into "some deep wound / calling you down," as if the battlefield itself pulls at you.
The speaker seems weary, wary and quietly haunted. The mood is hushed and bleak, with tenderness always shadowed by death.