Posted Here With The Kind Permission Of The Author
THE WALL
There’s a wall of marble
Five hundred feet long –
Ten feet high, scribed with names
Of those who died, the strong.
There’s more than fifty-eight thousand
Etched upon that stone –
Most of them died so young
This life, they’ve never known.
It’s such a small tribute
To those who fought our war –
Such a small price we pay
To those who gave much more.
Their name carved in a rock
That most of us won’t read –
Not near enough praise to give
For their most gracious deed.
Seems there’s too many of us
Who don’t really seem to care
That we stayed home secure and safe
While they died over there.
Remember when you see that Wall
With all those initials and names
That those men were only pawns
In one more of those deadly games.
Let’s hope what they gave had meaning –
And that peace will always reign –
That we won’t have to send our young
To fight and die again.
OLD GLORY
More than two hundred years ago
Betsy Ross sewed strips of rag –
From those bits of colored cloth
Was shaped “Old Glory”, our grand flag.
Stripes of red and white
For the thirteen colonies –
White stars against the blue Began
waving in the breeze.
It’s gone through minor changes –
With stars added, as we grew –
It’s flown proudly o’er our land
And in some other countries, too.
That symbol of our freedom –
Should be protected, at all cost –
But now our reverence for it
Seems, to be getting lost.
There are some things so sacred
To our great American way
That, those who desecrate it
Should, have a price, to pay.
Even though each buys his own
That flag belongs to us all –
It’s owned by all the people
And we should never let it fall.
THE GOOD OL’ DAYS
They said, “It’s alright to burn it.”
“You can throw it to the ground.”
“You can wear it on your back.
That symbol of the freedom bound.
It’s been through catastrophes –
Flown high in wartimes’ strife –
Men swore they would protect it
And did so with their life.
What makes them so supreme –
The high court of this land
To tell us when those Stars and Stripes
Should fall; when they should stand.
What right do they think they have
To let our flag be set ablaze –
Once, it was loved and respected –
Back there, in the good ol’ days.
MEMORIAL DAY
A time for picnics, time off work –
Vacations and the “Indy” –
A holiday, too often times
We forget what, it should be.
A time to pay respect to those
Who rallied to the battle cry –
Who gave their lives for liberty –
Those freedoms for you and I.
Such a waste of brave young souls –
Some still struggling through their youth
Who faced and fell willingly
Before wartimes’ awful truth.
So as we share this holiday
With our friends or family –
Take a moment to give thanks to
Those who died so we’d stay free.
Let us strive for world peace –
For the end of greed and hate –
For next time, after “the war”
It just may be too damned late.
FREEDOMS’ MEMORIAL
This day is set aside
to honor those
who took the chance to die.
But they have died in vain
if we ever forget
the reason why.
Freedom can be like time
slipping away
before we even know.
But we all have the choice
more, a duty
to battle freedoms’ foe.
Let us give thanks this day
to all those brave
who paid the highest cost.
Not take it for granted
and realize
it easily could be lost.
Michael Robert Patterson was born in Arlington and is the son of a former officer of the US Army. So it was no wonder that sooner or later his interests drew him to American history and especially to American military history. Many of his articles can be found on renowned portals like the New York Times, Washingtonpost or Wikipedia.
Reviewed by: Michael Howard