A Poem for Veteran's Day

[nolabear]

Veteran’s Day

So many opportunities to salute.
So many afternoons to decide
whether to stand beneath the umbrella
or to turn one’s face upward, like the weary dead,
to the darkening sky.
This war is a heavy war, heavy as a coffin,
Heavy as a widow’s tears, heavy as the rain that waters the graves
that stretch like sky to that shame of a horizon,
so far that the bugle notes don’t reach.
Beneath the ground
the soldiers are not humming along.