Loddy

Autumn 2007

We buried him with honors,

In the field where the honored lay.

Packed into the plot,

Of a military post as old as the country.

Interred in the earth,

With the ghosts,

Of the Long Gray Line.

So he took his place,

He who was stolen from the fold.

The folded flag.

The rifle crack that tore the sky.

The souls of those in memorial standing,

Lieutenants, generals, chaplains,

All in tears.

The foundations of masculinity,

Men who’d seen death,

Tasted cordite,

Known fear,

Here, sobbed.

Not as children, in self pity,

Nor as mothers in overwhelming grief.

Here, sobbed

as Men.

Men wrought with pain,

Over friendship torn asunder,

Over a brother gone,

Over injustice, and unfairness,

Over his grave.

They wept in uniforms,

And berets,

And stood silent attention,

To his passing.

And in that that place,

I felt the dead,

As I’ve ne’er felt anywhere else.

Perhaps it was their proximity,

Stacked on top of each other,

Two hundred years of wraiths,

But every funeral, every service

My hairs stood up,

My neck ran cold fingers down my spine,

And I dared not close my eyes from the sun.

The folding flag.

The cracking gun.

The brass engrav-ed urn.

The Men,

Weeping.