Which inspired this poem (about my grandpa, of course). Not one of my best. It's hard to put those things in words which are really only shadows of thoughts.
One Man, One Soldier
He walks with courage
Though now with a cane, but once it was a gun
Now his steps are slow, but once he marched into war
Never seeing the man he would become
Maybe not understanding all he
fought for.
He shuffles slowly down the hall
But once he ran full force onto the beaches of France
Screaming out over the mortars and cannon blasts.
Now that voice that carried commands
has become harder to hear. His eyes, once bright and soulful
now wear wisdom, wrinkled and woeful.
Now his steps are slower and he’s always being passed
by all the generations behind him
moving too fast
All those people who will never
understand
the honor he deserves,
the indelible mark his actions made on the pages of time
in the stories they have never heard.
His tall frame now withers, hunching from age
And though that tired body has worked itself sore
The marks made that day have
remained
The memories of war
The purple heart on a shelf in his
closet
The friends who he lost there on
the shore
The family he came home to
He
remembers what he fought for
He used to fight hard and long, but now he’s tired
And he already found his hill to die on
The man who stormed the beaches
Who limps with shrapnel in his side
Now walks with careful steps, leaning on his grandchildren
who
have always known his sacrifice
Who
listen to his tales of war and find
That ordinary men become heroes
and courage shows itself in many ways
--sometimes in war stories and flashes of light
Sometimes in farming and strife
Sometimes in the faithful way you
live your life.
This man, the soldier could teach them all that.
When they look into his eyes and
listen
To one man’s journey in history, to
one man’s scars
Teaching about bravery
Making his children who they are.
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