Memoria Day Poem by: Rod McKuen
www.rodmckuen.comGo to his site and check it out. You can also buy his books there. He is my favorite poet!
PARADING THE COLORS
Red should not always stand for bloodnot even that spilled by our fathers
and our sonsin the great parade of wars with numbers
one.
two.
three?
Red is a sunset color
a painted desert dye
the color of the Arizona plains
and at certain times, the West Virginia sky.
Pride and purity may use the color white.
But snow-topped Colorado Mountains,
ice across the Great Lakes in December
and Alaska every day of wintertime
claimed the color first.
Not to mention that long strand of sandy Utah
and every Massachusetts / California beach.
So many uniform are blue
that we forgot the Truckee and the Mississippi
blue sky ocean to ocean,
blue ocean sky to sky.
Atlantic and Pacific have always been not green
but blue.
I know my history lessons,
I learned them well
that this nation to become a nation
ran forward into battle shouting freedom!
And often bore the tattered tri-color
home againfor men to mend
and start another battle new.
I am aware
that flagmakers make new fortunes
every Veterans / Decoration Day,
and broken bodies bathed in canvas
and the stars and stripes
have slid off ten thousand ships
maybe twenty thousand more,
to rest upon the bottom of the mother sea.
Excelsior at Iwo Jima.
Bully at Bull Run.
A step for man and mankind
murmured on the moon
Peace with honor... somewhere.
Mothers of dead sons have pride.
Me too.
But I would rather paint my colors
on a bright balloon -children then would wave at me
and chase my shadow.
Old men who sit at tables making wars
Do not do so in my name again.
It has taken me two hundred years
to come down to this place.
I have earned the right to see red, white, and blue
not on a battered standard borne in battle
but on my brother’s face.
I love my flag.
To me it stands for love
kindness even to my enemy
and most of all, for brotherhood.
