On Veteran's Day

I'm remembering my father, who served in the Air Force in both WWII and the Korean "Police Action." Also thinking of my uncle who served in the Army in WWII and used to play taps on his bugle at military commemorations, and of other friends and relatives and all those who have served in the military to protect the rest of us.

Minnesota blizzard

Photo by J. Harrington

Other November 11 events of note:

• Fyodor Dostoevsky was born in 1821


• Armistice signed: "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918


• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was born in 1922


• U. S. numbered highway system was established in 1926


• Forty-nine people died in the Armistice Day Blizzard of 1940

Facing It

Yusef Komunyakaa, 1947

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn’t,
dammit: No tears. 
I’m stone. I’m flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way—the stone lets me go.
I turn that way—I’m inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap’s white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s 
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet’s image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I’m a window.
He’s lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman’s trying to erase names:
No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair.

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