Lou J. Klaiber

JUST A CASE OF POETIC LICENSE

To those who say we fought
for nothing!
I say it’s true……… we fought
for YOU!

To those young friends
not yet born……… Hello!
We fought for you.

But mostly for each other
we fought;
and for ourselves!
Caught, upon the hot anvil!
Forged into Brothers
by War’s ritual horror!

And for the first time
I knew you
America!
My home!
Born to war
by warriors frozen in time
at Valley Forge.

Knew the suffering;
the pain of loss;
the gain
of endearing Love…
knew your heart……… America!

It was your presence I felt.
as dirty,
… as aching and tired as I,
standing beside the silent dead…
beneath a hot sky…
A small wind tugging at their hair,
drying the last of sweat ……… the end of tears.

I thought of you as I cradled
a wounded soldier’s head…
a friend who didn’t outlive
the cigarette I lit for him.

He who never returned from war
to feel
the incredible weight of emptiness.
………
nor the pleasure of aging and reading
E lines of electric cadence…
marching as to a dream,
left for us all.
The yet Free!
Still alive!
Souls
of eternal Liberty!