Monday, May 28, 2007
Memorial Day
Gold Star Mother, to you
the honor of a white Cadillac
at the front of the parade.
Your slow steps
escorting the wreath
up the gray slate path
to the war monument
by the public library.
Each clang of the fire engine bell
is the face of someone's son.
Four old soldiers aim
rifles at the blue sky,
a nervous boy plays "Taps."
They rest there for weeks,
your ribbons & fading flowers.
A poem I've tinkered with over the years, snipping mostly, originally published as "Gold Star Mother." The Gold Star Mother I had in mind was "Aunt" Emma, a kindly, white-haired woman. Don't know how my parents became friends with her & her husband. They lived in house my dad helped build in the late Forties on a hill behind where Blue Star Mall is now on Route 22, when the area had a country feel. The Memorial Day of my childhood was mainly a World War II ceremony, the "good" war. Aunt Emma was surrounded & escorted by veterans the age of her son, had he lived, perhaps even his boyhood friends. This made the public remembrance before hundreds of townspeople especially poignant, & no doubt quite painful for her. His name was on the monument with an asterisk next to it for "*Supreme Sacrifice." He was one clang of the fire bell. But it was her duty also to serve as a living memory, a reminder that behind the words about duty, honor & valor, behind the flags & rituals of the day, war is always tragic.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
the honor of a white Cadillac
at the front of the parade.
Your slow steps
escorting the wreath
up the gray slate path
to the war monument
by the public library.
Each clang of the fire engine bell
is the face of someone's son.
Four old soldiers aim
rifles at the blue sky,
a nervous boy plays "Taps."
They rest there for weeks,
your ribbons & fading flowers.
A poem I've tinkered with over the years, snipping mostly, originally published as "Gold Star Mother." The Gold Star Mother I had in mind was "Aunt" Emma, a kindly, white-haired woman. Don't know how my parents became friends with her & her husband. They lived in house my dad helped build in the late Forties on a hill behind where Blue Star Mall is now on Route 22, when the area had a country feel. The Memorial Day of my childhood was mainly a World War II ceremony, the "good" war. Aunt Emma was surrounded & escorted by veterans the age of her son, had he lived, perhaps even his boyhood friends. This made the public remembrance before hundreds of townspeople especially poignant, & no doubt quite painful for her. His name was on the monument with an asterisk next to it for "*Supreme Sacrifice." He was one clang of the fire bell. But it was her duty also to serve as a living memory, a reminder that behind the words about duty, honor & valor, behind the flags & rituals of the day, war is always tragic.
