LETTERS CAST IN SANDOne night as pen and paper, fall freely from my hand,
I wrote to our troops in finger-scrawl on a darkened shore
Then I heard sea-drumming; coming low, like a marching band,
as words were washing from my soul and rhyming by the score
Then I felt a feather flick my face and fall to salty sand
But darkness grounds all birds, to nestle on the land
I believe it fell from an angel, sailing softly past a dune,
as forceful seas of private shame, came washing in once more.
I think it was last season’s song, swirling through her tune,
while waves wept booming echoes, like a distant cannon’s roar.
I wrote my sandy phrase, by the light of a blood-red moon,
from a letter saying her son was dead, which arrived too soon.
Perhaps a windy blast had blown that dove-fluff free,
as some bird sat sleeping on a fence or telephone line.
But the moonlit beach held neither fence, nor line, nor tree:
It only offers frothing waves and winds to chill your spine
I thought back to a busty barmaid, tattooed in poetry
“Gone But Not Forgotten” are words worn for all to see.
Has peace become a shell-game for peasants on the beach;
or a perfect pearl of passion pinned to a hellish harlot’s dress?
When will we learn that fighting puts God’s mercy out of reach;
as it ruffles feathers, when His sandbox becomes a bloody mess?
Will wartime propaganda be the only song we teach;
while un-hatched generations pay for the lies we preach?
This morning, as the sun rises to reveal my sandy scrawl;
All this beach will let me say is in those letters that washed away;
like bands, which march in silence, as angels sing and fall.
Grisly gulls - pecking at crabs - seem to bow and pray;
to dove duets, cooing lost love-songs, with every calming call;
as a sad parade loads instruments, in black boxes down the hall.
Jeffersons Ghost
While writing letters to perfect strangers, who serve us in battle overseas, might seem futile, it matters a great deal to our troops. Instead of tying a tired yellow ribbon to an old oak tree, find a way to send gifts or at least write letters to America’s Finest. A letter to some stranger in uniform seems like such a silly little thing. Little things matter, however, when your best friend just died in a fire-fight for foreign sand.
http://www.letterstosoldiers.org/events.html