I wrote this one late evening in Arlington National Cemetary....As the moon's light drifted across the gardens of stone, I wondered what the stones would say of what lay beneath them....
Sua Sponte
Brothers in Moonlight
Moonlight...
Dawns on marble heads.
Quite.
In this eve of Epitaphs,
And past miseries
Now revisited.
Yet how these silent
Slabs of grey speak.
To those who venture
Deep into fields
Of the stony dead.
Fields.
Where upright granite
Serves to remind
The living of the
Fallen...
For no matter how
Wicked or
Foolish in life;
We become...
We are transformed
Into being revered...
Worshipped as monuments
Of greatness in death;
Examples of all that is good
In this world.
Words of praise
False or otherwise
Etched intom these silent
Unyielding stones.
If voices these
Chiseled rocks possessed
Surely they would cry out
In anguish,
Of that which lies beneath.
For the evil that men do
Corrupts even these
Marble markers...
Illuminated in the....
Moonlight
Ranger