GOPUSA Eagle, ASI

Memorial Day 2009 Is a Solemn Occasion
by Doug Patton

"On Sunday morning of Memorial Day weekend, my family and I gather at a
small rural cemetery on a windswept hillside, surrounded by rich Iowa
farmland, as the local chapter of the Veterans of Foreign Wars honors
the men buried there who served in all of America's wars, from the War
of 1812 to Operation Iraqi Freedom."

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Passed on to you via ASI

Tribute to America's Veterans

"Those Honored Dead"
"Why do you fly the flag today?"
My Grandson wants to know.
I fly it for the graveyards
Where the countless crosses grow.

I fly the flag for children
Whose fathers are a name.
A half-remembered memory
of a face within a frame.

I fly it for the families
of sons and daughters lost.
They know the price of liberty
How terrible the cost!

I fly the flag for veterans
who lost their youth in blood.
And saw their comrades slaughtered
in the carnage and the mud.

I fly it for the ones who marched
In cadence off to war
To close their eyes forever
Upon some foreign shore.

I fly the flag for grief poured out
Upon a granite wall.
The laying-on of hands that heals
The scars within us all.

I fly it for the sound of Taps---
That melancholy tune
That lays to rest those honored dead
Who always die too soon.

Copyright 1994 Marion G. Mahoney

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