In Pacem

We missed it, Dad—
that last embrace that bonds
the blood of men
who always faced into the wind of love
and never understood its source.

So arrived the days in early fall.
We settled for a handshake, then,
and after all the years that we pretended
we were close,
the words, like leaves, were also blown away:
weightless, dry, and crumbling.

There we stood, two helpless men
without so much as one distracting tear,
who lied about the year to come,
and of those dear and fresh remembrances
beyond the day of parting.

You knew the last stop
would be Arlington,
albeit not on Chaplain's Hill
where sleeping comrades filled the ground
you loved. You did not know
a slope beneath that crowning tree
awaited you.

So there it was:
that we assembled heard again
the sound of Taps,
the slap against the sky
of twenty-one explosions,
and a young man's tribute to an officer
who wore two crosses and a silver leaf—
who'd marched with his old comrades years before.

Now there is this aging son
embracing just with spirit arms,
to wish you rest, old soldier,
there to find the peace
you never knew in war...
the peace we shared one final afternoon,
on Chaplain's Hill.
~