News Hour Scrapbook

                       —for The Silent Ones

Soldiers in desert fatigues for us

explode. They do their duty in 

sands of distant Iraq. For them

weep & moan, while we drink

the wine. The weekly photos in

dark silence engender no pride

No satisfaction in rank & age

city & state. Photo after photo

streams by.19 pink/brown faces

of youth blink by into memory

One more soldier down, 2000

more dead & 20,000 wounded

are hidden in a thicket of words

that depress. Aerial maps, boots

on ground, candy bars & cartoons

are not items revealed in prophetic

verses. Three years we slide show

fallen soldiers in News Hour silence

*   *   *   *   *

Responses

Hey! High praise indeed!!  I like it too… Love, Pat

Rudy, you memorialize the soldiers at the same time that you underscore the uselessness (horror) of their dying and their mutilation.  Your poem should be on national t.v.  I, too, watch the photos and captions as often as I can--all those young men taken before their time--and I think of their mothers & fathers, wives/husbands & children.  How can Bush & Co. sleep at night?  It's a crying shame, a disgrace.  Miriam

posted 23 February 2006