Michael McGuire Memorial Day
MEMORIAL DAY
© Electric Babylon Music Author: M.M.
He graduated high school in May and went to war in September, it was
cloudy that day that’s all she can remember, if anything was left
unsaid it wasn’t I love you, they said the war would be over soon and
that was something to cling to.
Well he was killed; officially they said on the last day of the war, while a
whole country and one mother wondered what he was even there for,
she didn’t cry she didn’t sleep she didn’t eat until his body was home
again, then she broke apart over all that was left of what might have
been.
He had wanted to be a writer but he really loved music too, she was so
proud of him there wasn’t anything her boy couldn’t do, it was true he
had a lot of talent in the ninth grade he had written a play, she would
often read the last letter he wrote; it had a poem in it called memorial
day.
If they could see this blinding
Sight,
They wouldn’t call it memorial day.
They would be more delicate with
The memory’s burden,
Then to bind it to this loathsome
Spectacle.
There, that pulp of fresh John Doe,
Used to have a name, and his friends
Called him Shiner, because he had
Once been hit with the butt of a rifle
And had a black eye for a week.
No one can ever really remember him
Now.
No one except me, for I fear I shall
Never be able to forget.
After all these years she still sobbed every time she read that letter,
knowing he joined Shiner six days later at certain times it actually
made her feel a little better, in his sleep her baby is safe out of the
harm of memory’s way, and she always speaks his name on memorial
day.
Oct00