Soldier's Veterans Day Poem

by Johnny Orlokawitz
(Merion, PA, USA)

The town where I live is twenty miles west of Philadelphia. There are enormous clothing stores, national retail outlets, boutique shops, and shining car dealerships. There is also a plaque that sits quietly on the corner of two busy streets which reads: "George Washington and his men crossed here during the winter of 1777."

If you didn't look carefully, you'd never see it, but 20 miles east of the hallowed grounds where the General and his men spent the brutal winter at Valley Forge, there is a small reminder of what it meant to fight for country.

Not far from this plaque, in easy walking distance on a nice day or a quick bike ride if it's not raining, there is a baseball field. The field sports AA baseball, the kind of league that features batters whose names no one has heard of. They play on the same grass where pee-wee football practices, and chew tobacco in a small dugout where kids play into the night.

From deep left field, if you look carefully through the chain-link fence, there is a small alcove lined with trees and laid with brick. A single American flag is set into the ground, and a memorial to the veterans of the two world wars stands, overlooking the site and the late summer-night games.

On July 4th the town makes a festive pilgrimage to the baseball field, carrying blankets and strollers filled with toys. The fireworks are always dazzling, and the music hearkens to a time when people gathered not just to celebrate but to remember. In the dark sky, the electric trails of color drift over the memorial and over the town.

There is a quiet contrast between that festive smoke and the distant fog of battlefield armaments which the memorial recalls.

On Veterans Day a parade winds through the cordoned-off, car-free streets. The march passes the memorial alcove, the baseball field, and the five and dime store.

Despite the noise of scout troops and band drummers, for a few moments there is a hallowed feeling, as if soldiers had returned from far away, and the quiet left by the absence of those who did not make it home lingers in the afternoon air like bursts of light shooting out over the town.

Soldier's Veterans Day Poem

To be a soldier is to march,
up the ground that settles fate,
and never to surrender hope,
as much as victory lies in wait.

To be a soldier is to battle,
with demons outside and within,
to question enemies where they lie,
and challenge proudly when others sin.

To be a soldier is to muster,
the courage of a thousand years,
to call on legions ages past,
who not once relented to their fears.

To be a soldier is to return,
or rest in hallowed destiny,
to be a veteran of battles past,
to never be absent from memory.