Memorial Day

He graduated high school in May and went to war in September,
It was cloudy that day that’s all she can remember, If anything was left unsaid
it wasn’t; I love you, They said the war would be over soon and that was
something to cling to.
Well; he was killed; officially they said on the last day of the war,
While a whole country and one mother wondered what he was even there for,
She didn’t cry; she didn’t sleep; she didn’t eat; until his body was home again,
Then she broke apart over all that was left of what might have been.
He had wanted to be a writer but he really loved music too,
She was so proud of him there wasn’t anything her boy couldn’t do,
She would often read the last letter he wrote; it had a poem in it called
Memorial Day.
If they could see this blinding
Sight,
They wouldn’t call it Memorial Day.
They would be more delicate with
The memory’s burden,
Than to bind it to this loathsome
Spectacle.
There, that pulp of fresh John Doe,
Used to have a name, and his friends
Called him Shiner, because he had
Once been hit with the butt of a rifle
And had a black eye for a week.
No one can ever really remember him
Now.
No one except me, for I fear I shall
Never be able to forget.
After all these years she still sobbed every time she read that letter,
Knowing he joined Shiner six days later at certain times it actually made her
feel a little better,
In his sleep her baby is safe; out of the harm of memory’s way,
And she always speaks his name on Memorial Day.