Sitting here by a bannered grave,

I keep company with a warrior long since dead.Just marking quieting time in this new spring season …I see in my mind's eye a processionThe family, friends and faithful of this warrior of memory,And especially note that it was a child who carried the flag.This warrior of old fought and died for the flagThat hangs in tatters now over his unkempt grave.How long shall it be before he is lost to memory?Souls when not prodded by the living do become as dead.It is for us, the living, to make matter in our life-processionThat transient and fleeting spark he sacrificed in his ill-fated summer season.I meditated upon my thoughts and became lost in this, my own autumn season …But startled as a freshening breeze from the west unfurled that battered flagAnd again and again, as if in procession,Unfurled and made dance the tatters over each so-marked grave,Bringing to mind the demands of all the warrior-deadThat they too shall not be lost to memory.A tortured vision of grown children, those wearing blue or butternut, rebounded in my memoryAs if carried by the warring winds of a long ago winter seasonWhich whipped and winnowed even the leaves already deadAnd threatened to tear asunder that flagWhich strained at its moorings by the threatening gravesWaiting at the wrong end of that damned and fury-filled procession!Oh, that poor child who led our solemn and noted processionAlready struggled to see the warrior's face in memoryAs he led the parade of mourners to an open graveIn this his own hard and confused season.For a parting gift, he left the flag …A salute to the warrior his father who now bivouacs with the dead.Today, with the threats and blusters of winter now dead,As I sit here keeping company with my thoughts in procession,I am enlightened as to why we renew the remnants of yesteryear's flag:We do so to create in others a memoryThat will last throughout their lifetime seasonOf the mattered life of the warrior who rests in this grave.Our honored dead shall live in perpetual memory,Throughout the procession of every new season,As we focus upon the fluttering flag that marks the remembered warrior's grave.Joe NihenLansford