Memorial Day, 2019

My father, and my mother's brother, and my father-in-law, are part of The Greatest Generation. Each served in World War II (the last time a US Congress actually declared war). Their respective families were fortunate to have each of these members of our armed forces return home. We wonder, more and more often these days, what they would think of the country they had been willing to sacrifice their lives for.

when will the country soar like its symbol?

Photo by J. Harrington

During the last presidential election, more than 62 million voters cast their ballots for a clearly unqualified candidate who, since that election, sounds more and more like a nazi leader the Greatest Generation fought to protect our country against. Pundits are now questioning how long until we are engaged in our next civil war. Elections are being unduly influenced by global corporations (Citizens' United) and foreign governments (Mueller Report). One party in Congress aids and abets such behavior. The other articulates "tsk, tsks" and "yadda, yadda, yaddas," but does little more.

Meanwhile, the only world we know, the one on which we depend for our very lives, is coming unraveled and becoming dysfunctional because of capitalism and the need for profits derived from perpetual growth. From what I know of my father, my uncle, and my father-in-law, I'm pretty sure each and every one of them, and all the members of the Greatest Generation, who fought to make the world safe for democracy, would be ashamed of us, and rightly so. On this, and too many past Memorial Days, we have forgotten who we are, where we've come from, and how many have made the ultimate sacrifice just so that we could help create and, so far, fail to correct, the mess our country is in. I believe, and hope, that "we're better than this." Now I'd like to see us demonstrate it.

Memorial Day

By Michael Anania

It is easily forgotten, year to

year, exactly where the plot is,

though the place is entirely familiar—

a willow tree by a curving roadway

sweeping black asphalt with tender leaves;

damp grass strewn with flower boxes,

canvas chairs, darkskinned old ladies

circling in draped black crepe family stones,

fingers cramped red at the knuckles, discolored

nails, fresh soil for new plants, old rosaries;

such fingers kneading the damp earth gently down

on new roots, black humus caught in grey hair

brushed back, and the single waterfaucet,

birdlike upon its grey pipe stem,

a stream opening at its foot.

We know the stories that are told,

by starts and stops, by bent men at strange joy

regarding the precise enactments of their own

gesturing. And among the women there will be

a naming of families, a counting off, an ordering.

The morning may be brilliant; the season

is one of brilliances—sunlight through

the fountained willow behind us, its splayed

shadow spreading westward, our shadows westward,

irregular across damp grass, the close-set stones.

It may be that since our walk there is faltering,

moving in careful steps around snow-on-the-mountain,

bluebells and zebragrass toward that place

between the willow and the waterfaucet, the way

is lost, that we have no practiced step there,

and walking, our own sway and balance, fails us.

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