Memorial Day Poems - Dress Blues

A Rhyme Embossed with Freedom's Cost

All we have of freedom,
All we use or know,
This our fathers bought for us
Long and long ago.

Rudyard Kipling
The Old Issue
(1899)



His uniform, it gathers dust,
And yet she keeps it, as she must.
For since she heard the word, bereft,
It's all of him that she has left.

His many medals, multi-hued,
Recall his image, love renewed.
With pride and sorrow, in his stead,
They form a pillow for her head.

Her love was spilt across the sea
To answer calls for liberty.
Though he's been gone for many years,
His memory still ties her to tears.

Parades may form, and troops may march,
Processionals of neatest starch.
And they salute the sacrificed,
Who gave beyond what could be priced.

She'll line her walk with flags again
To honor all the fallen men
And pray for loved ones left alone
With nothing by a granite stone.

She'll lay some blossoms by his name,
Her loyalty thus to proclaim,
And hold his empty hat again
Until she joins the freedom train.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

On Memorial Day (the last Monday in May), Americans honor our fallen soldiers from present days and days gone by. Liberty comes at a dear price, particularly when that cost becomes personal. (Is it ever not personal?)