|
Here are my favorite poems, many of them classics, and above them, some I've written. As with pictures on this website, feel free to copy and use them - but if you use poems I have written and post them anywhere, please mention the author and give a link to this website. Thank you.
The Blood of Our Soldiers
They blow in breezes of the past-
Fields laced with common grass
In breaking dawn I glimpse the fight
O'er which shone hallowed rays of light
On the blood of our soldiers.
In corrupted minds they plot and plan
For fame and power - wicked men.
With blinded eye they steal away
And think that they can simply play
With the blood of our soldiers.
He does not care for life or limb
There are things more precious to him
Our carefree lives are safe from harm
With his brave and unfailing arm
And the blood of our soldiers.
The weapons are improved, they say
We live to fight another day
But some things still will never change:
The faces or the fallen names
Or the blood of our soldiers.
In dreams I live another life--
One full of sacrificial strife
In which my body is laid down
And my blood falls to unfeeling ground
Near the blood of our soldiers.
©The Spitfire, 1/27/06
A Soldier's Coming Home
He said, "Don't worry, baby
And don't feel so alone
When this time is over
A soldier's coming home."
When boot camp days were over
She thought he'd never go
But one day he got orders
And her soldier left his home.
Mail was long in coming
But through the fighters' drone
He'd write, "I miss you honey
Don't know when I'm coming home."
"The fighting is much worse now
Here in the combat zone
But no matter what may happen
I promise I'll come home."
The telegram was simple
And the coffin, cold as stone.
That morning, "Taps" was played.
A soldier had come home.
©The Spitfire, 1/29/06
If The Dead Could Speak
If the dead could speak, what would they say
And what of the soldiers who died in the fray?
As revisionists change and alter and screen
The things that happened through history.
If those soldiers could talk, of what would they tell?
Stories of life lived through Heaven and Hell
And with each fading word and each dying dream
Away blows the truth that through their eyes I've seen.
If they were alive, what would we hear...
Or would their corrections fall on deaf ears?
We prefer to believe what we want to be true
So one more true page is torn out of view.
If it weren't for us, who would they be?
Rows upon rows of crosses I see
As they slowly die off, their stories die too
Because of such liars who conquer anew.
And if they were here, what could we do
To pay for their sacrifice, tarnished and skewed?
We cannot begin to ease suffering and pain
When truth longs to be heard and cries out in vain.
©The Spitfire, 10/22/05
In Flander's Fields
In Flander's fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.
-John McCrae
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
-Robert Frost
The Things That Make A Soldier Great
The things that make a soldier great and send him out to die,
To face the flaming cannon's mouth nor ever question why,
Are lilacs by a little porch, the row of tulips red,
The peonies and pansies, too, the old petunia bed,
The grass plot where his children play, the roses on the wall:
'Tis these that make a soldier great. He's fighting for them all.
Tis not the pomp and pride of kings that make a soldier brave;
'Tis not allegiance to the flag that over him may wave;
For soldiers never fight so well on land or on the foam
As when behind the cause they see the little place called home.
Endanger but that humble street whereon his children run,
You make a soldier of the man who never bore a gun.
What is it through the battle smoke the valiant soldier sees?
The little garden far away, the budding apple trees,
The little patch of ground back there, the children at their play,
Perhaps a tiny mound behind the simple church of gray.
The golden thread of courage isn't linked to castle dome
But to the spot, where 'er it be - the humble spot called home.
And now the lilacs bud again and all is lovely there
And homesick soldiers far away know spring is in the air;
The tulips come to bloom again, the grass once more is green,
And every man can see the spot where all his joys have been.
He sees his children smile at him, he hears the bugle call,
And only death can stop him now - he's fighting for them all.
Nothing Gold Can Stay
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
-Robert Frost
Grass
Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass; I cover all.
And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?
I am the grass.
Let me work.
-Carl Sandburg
|
