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On Decoration Day When hatred, vengence, greed smother all reason and turn men down war's dark alley way stumbling along strange streets, through broken buildings in pursuit of glory and they fall always unexpectedly all heroically, it is we, weeping women who remain, picking at war's leftovers. Abandoned wives, mothers, daughters lighting votive candles, savoring letters penned by dead fingers, wearing paper poppies that bleed in the rain and placing tiny flags amid grassy seas of headstones that mark row upon row of bones on Decoration Day. |
Additional Notes:
When I was a child, Memorial Day was called Decoration Day
because we decorated graves of service men like my father. Now, it has become
Memorial Day. Perhaps this renaming is meant to distance us from war.
But women, who bear witness, know its reality all too well.
I wrote this poem two days ago, and after reading it, chopped off an ending
that preached too much. I think the point is made...
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