I watched the flag pass by one day.
It fluttered in the breeze.
A young Marine saluted it,
And then he stood at ease.
I looked at him in uniform;
So young, so tall, so proud.
With hair cut square and eyes alert,
He’d stand out in any crowd.
I thought how many men like him
Had fallen through the years.
How many died on foreign soil;
How many mothers’ tears?
I heard the sound of Taps one night,
When everything was still.
I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill.
I wondered just how many times
That Taps had meant ‘Amen.’
When a flag had draped a coffin
Of a brother or a friend.
I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands
With interrupted lives.
I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea.
Of unmarked graves in Arlington. NO FREEDOM ISN’T FREE
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