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Friday, September 29, 2017

Oconomowoc Veterans Park. 9/28/2017

I’ve been thinking
a lot
about war lately,
especially the most important one,
you know what I mean,
the one that happened to us.
I’ve been thinking
about bravery,
and fear,
how the absence of one
does not define the other.
I’ve been thinking
about how
no one hates war
more than the warrior.
I need not think
too long on this.
It is a given.
It is for sure.
No one hates war
more than the warrior.

When we were kids,
we were oh so serious
about playing war.
We had the leftover helmets
from somebody else’s
most important war.
A few of us had B.B. guns,
most of us used sticks,
pretending to rat-a-tat-tat.

When we were still only teens,
some of us in our twenties,
we were still kids,
even though we thought
we were grown men and women,
just because we were stationed
so far from home.
Some of us,
a very few,
thought we were
still playing war,
though most of us knew,
it was a deadly serious game.

Now that we are older,  
even old,
we know
how foolish we were.
How silly of us to think
any of it was ever a game.

So yes, my brothers and sisters,
the only war that seems to matter
is the one we fought in.
All warriors have this understanding.
All veterans have this agreement.
There have been so many wars,
yet only one was the worst.
Because it happened to us.
So many battles,
so many dead and wounded,
even when there was nothing to win.

My brothers and sisters
did not then,
do not now,
fight for territory,
nor for some higher authority,
maybe not even for the nation,
nearly never.

My brothers and sisters,
my comrades,
fought and still fight for each other,
keeping their pledge,
abiding by their oath,
Operating with ruthless honor.
They fought and still fight together,
protecting the living
and attending to their higher duty,
remembering the dead.

I love them,
I appreciate them,
I honor them.
Even when
I have not met them,
I know them,
my brothers and sisters,
the veterans.

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