The Voices At Arlington Cemetery

Today I shed quiet tears

Had a sadness like previous years

Emotions still overwhelm me

Veterans pass by but its like they can’t see

Old friends congregate and one of them says

I lost my friends in enemy bays

Couldn’t find them when we converged

Enemy fire destroyed our vessel as it emerged

Sometimes the stories are dismal and confuse

All the details twisted, the veterans are bemuse

They try to remember but it’s all blank

All they talk about is the approaching enemy tank

Rocket fire was rampant and whistled by

Lieutenant as brave as he was, he wanted to cry

I saw puffs of smoke that swallowed my friends

None survived the blast and now fate sends

Good men to unmarked graves and no one knows

The identity of the men who lay in Arlington’s rows

On Memorial Day many come to honor their lives

No one even knows their children , their wives

Can’t speak with familiarity by the graveside

Eyes are teary though they don’t know who had died

Makes me teary too cause I clearly see

Every friend who returns here religiously

They march slowly and sometimes whistle the Taps

Empathetically they often remove their caps

Remy, gravitates to my strange grave with our kid, not alone

Youth tore me up, he placed items on my unmarked headstone