Memorial Day, Dayton National Cemetery (a poem)

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Memorial Day, Dayton National Cemetery

They have all come looking
for fathers, husbands, uncles, or sons
and they find them
still
standing at attention
aligned in straight rows
like some perverse take on the domino theory
that killed so many of them.

Roaming strange fields they fell
as rifles talk! talk! talked!
the universal language of gunfire,
bullets swearing holes into mud-caked skin.

And today, the only blood not shed
flows through the veins
of the mothers, fathers, sons & daughters,
gathered here to touch the sun-bleached stones.





(from the chapbook TRYING TO UNRAVEL SOMETHING, ANYTHING, 1998)

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