A Memorial Day Poem

I watched the flag pass by one day.
It fluttered in the breeze.

A young Marine saluted it,
And then he stood at ease.

I looked at him in uniform;
so young, so tall, so proud.

With hair cut square and eyes alert,
he’d stand out in any crowd.

I thought how many men like him
had fallen through the years.

How many died on foreign soil;
how many mothers’ tears?

How many pilots’ planes shot down?
How many died at sea?

How many foxholes were soldiers’ graves?
No, freedom isn’t free.

I heard the sound of Taps one night,
when everything was still.

I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill.

I wondered just how many times
That Taps had meant ‘Amen.’

When a flag had draped a coffin
of a brother or a friend.

I thought of all the children,
of the mothers and the wives,

of fathers, sons and husbands
With interrupted lives.

I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea.

Of unmarked graves in  Arlington .
No, freedom isn’t free.