Unknown soldiers.

April poetry number nineteen...

Unknown soldiers.,..

He wrote to his journal in a Soldier graveyard in France outside of Paris in 1979. The dead don't suffer no-more. He is surrounded by 40,000 crosses with names of boys and men who will not return home. He burn the white sage in the place of the unknown soldiers. He lay his small tee-pee on the grass and put the burning sage into the hole in the tee-pee.

He watches the smoke rises to the sky and he prayed. Soldiers have a place to rest, soldiers have a place to know peace. He felt great sadness. He knew mamas, wives and children are waiting still. When a soldier doesn't return home. Someone is waiting.

He wondered, if God is kinder to the unknown soldiers? Men and women, nameless and not forgotten. He walked the long lines of white crosses with no names, just dates and their war.

He wonder if the dead could talk. What would they say? Soldiers fight, soldiers die. Left, right. Left, right. Above face. One shot, one kill. I remember you my lost friends.

Coyote

Author's Note

Thank you for reading.

Reviews

[Fabian G. Franklin]

Most soldiers alive today volunteered to serve. There are intrinsic job hazards to being a soldier, i.e., being shot at and being forced to shoot back. They tell the youth to sign up and fight for "freedom" but the greatest threat to American freedom resides in Washington D.C., not in Afghanistan or Iraq. They call the fallen "heroes" who willingly signed up for a job they were paid to do. If a tree falls on a logger they don't call him a "hero" when he dies. They call that a "tragedy". I understand the compassion for those who are drafted and elected into a conflict they did not choose, yet. serve bravely, despite their moral, political or religious objections. I could almost call them "heroes". On the other hand, those who join to serve and accept pay for their service; who knowingly enter a profession of killing and dying despite the obvious dangers, I believe to be no more heroes than the logger when the tree he was cutting fell on him. They are victims of an occupational hazard, not "heroes". My opinion may be an unpopular one but it is an honest evaluation of seeing through the bureaucratic shuck and jive made so popular by politicians who sit in cushy offices while others do their fighting and dying for them.

[Coyote Poetry]

Sometimes we must fight. Ukraine and many places are being attacked. Run or fight. Where do you run to? Oldest and greatest wisdom. The art of war. Must have good defense to stop war. Till the world put away the hate, the guns. Won't need soldiers. Soldiers will fight and die for home, freedom. I did.

[Fabian G. Franklin]

But they aren't dying for freedom or home, which is my point. They are dying for some politician's failed global agenda. My freedom has never been threatened by Saddam Hussein or Ho Chi Min. It gets threatened every day by the bureaucrats in D.C. though. Colin Powell lied when he said there was evidence of "weapons of mass destruction" so he could please his bosses. And American soldiers died because of those lies, not from any threat at all. It happens all the time. Ask some Vietnam Vets what they were fighting for in that war. We lost so if it was for freedom, then our freedom, (which we still have) would have become forfeit when we lost. That makes sense. The government, on the other hand, not so much. I wouldn't take a job at a place that didn't have good health insurance and carried Workman's Compensation. But the military has to beg for funds to help wounded soldiers from programs like The Wounded Warrior Project. The VA is a cruel joke. Biden won't fight, he'll talk sanction nonsense until everyone is bored and that's about it. I'm not suggesting anyone should "run" as you say. I'm suggesting that our leaders poorly choose the conflicts in which they involve the American people as is made obvious by recent history.

[Pryde Foltz]

God is kinder to the unknown soldiers?

I think God/love finds it easier to be felt when we do not name and judge a thing or a person.

Wonderful write, Coyote:)

[Coyote Poetry]

Thank you dear Pryde. We have too many graveyards for soldiers already. Now Ukraine. When we have enough murder and killing?

[Chris Shaw]

Everybody loses in war. I think of all the mothers who will lose sons and daughters to hostility. All those who will never return home to loved ones. Burning the sage is a small but appropriate thing to do. I think of all the war cemeteries, last resting place for so many. What a waste of life. Terrible sadness. Thought provoking words Coyote.

Chris

[Coyote Poetry]

Thank you, dear Chris. The WW2 graveyards of Europe. Can break your heart.