Funeral Exhibit ~Memorial Day Repost

I wrote this last year for Veterans Day; reposting it today, for Memorial Day as I'm sure this same scene is still going on all over this country, and in one way or another, in many others.

Funeral Exhibit

Stopped bored at the tracks I look

over the fence into the cemetery

at the funeral.

Heads bared to the lucid November sun

on display to all who pass outside,

the mourners shift uncomfortably

around the sad slump of green

cloth that is the

next to last

shelter of the passed.

A young black sailor stands frowning

in uniform on the outskirts of the grey white family,

stark as a banner of war in a country of peace.

His white cap floating above the composition

like an artist’s touch of cloud on sky

placed by design to draw the eye

away from the politely concealed

hole in the earth.

It seems obscene for me

to watch from my car

the flag folding,

the mortality party

to which I’m uninvited

but no one seems to care that

a few feet away the world

drives on.

In the rearview mirror

I see the sailor extinguish his cap

in a sudden grasp,

bow his head.

then they’re gone.

If only it was really

that easy to pass on.

November 2010

Veteran's Day

Photo credit: Veteran dedication marker, Elmwood Cemetery, Barre, Vermont ©2008 Kimberly Powell

Display

Display

We’ve taken your weapons for

our shinies. They are Art,

looking so good there on the wall.

Not because we needed them

but because you did.

With them, you took

the fleshgift and gave thanks,

clothed by them in the speed of the hare,

the strength of the herd, only culled

lightly by these sticks and blades,

or held them strangled in

sweatslick palms; a silver sickle's flash

in the night meadow of a hidden moon,

harvesting suede-skinned  wives

with pomegranate eyes

half asleep and weeping

in the night.

Some flew, smokesung, charmed

with feathering colors, back to the thrower

magicking  the empty pot,

or were sharpened, adorned, polished,

given names and a will to seek the outsider,

to meet him breast to breast

and drink his life.

But all that’s past and gone now.

Oh pretty yes, but laughable,

adorably primitive, that hand to hand concept

of some sort of personal responsibility.

No match at all for a pinch of black powder,

and the myriad vermicules of filth swarming

from our poisoned pockets.

They look perfect on the wall, don’t they?

They match the lampshades

and paint our power

soulless but infinite

over everything that matters.

April 2011

Posted for One Shoot Sunday at the inimitable One Stop Poetry

Image: Photo by Lauren Randolph