Where are your bones, I wonder?

Your dust, your last breath?

I see you queued with your mates

In your final military assembly:

            Bates next to Beasley

            Gillum next to Green

            And so on.

It is a moment captured forever in brass letters,

The year scuffed and barely legible.

How does a hero sleep?  Do you dream of past valor?

Or soft shoulders and tender kisses lost forever?

This once hallowed ground is swathed in weeds,

Cannons and missiles rusted and impotent,

The fence sagging with age.

People pass by, but nobody sees.

Even the names have become ghosts.

John W. Bebout  2018