L'aura del Campo

2019年5月27日: Make-peace-not-war-blog.

Today is Memorial Day here in the US, a federal holiday for remembering and honoring persons who have died while serving in the Armed Forces. How do you honor those who have passed (whether they served in the military or not)?

My dad (1916-1999) served in North Africa in WW2. He didn't talk about it much.

A poem from March 21, 2004 about my father:

Sapeur-télégraphiste

He ran the wires
behind the lines
that in the north of Africa
defined hell-fire's divide
of us and them.

Communication
brought no comfort to the front of war,
where barren back of brother
tangled with the wires,
cooled silent in the coffins.

He aspired to the signal corps,
felt ired when his back was broken,
retired to a family life,
expired at the age of eighty-two,

running out of time and wire
beyond the lines dividing us,
defining us in life's hell-fire. [161.4]

I found it in an old blog entry from March 2, 2006. I'll need to edit it as well as choose a new title. Took an hour to find it.

That said... our family did not celebrate war. I still don't. "Make peace not war" was closer to what we believed. In truth, there hasn't been a war on American soil since 1865 except for a couple incidents in the 1940s. Americans do NOT know what it's like to have foreign troops shooting at them or marching down their streets. I've visited Serbia and Kosovo where the US was involved in the 1990s. They knew... and still remembered. Do NOT ask my opinion about saber rattling in the Mid-East to goad Iran into a conflict.

As for my community: it was the custom where I grew up to place flags and flowers on the family graves.

My flash fiction for the day from the viewpoint of The Cat:

STATIC

Cat's eye of the storm [92] (299w)  (13+) Flash fiction less than 300 words. Prompt: I've never seen anything like it. #2191841 by Kåre Enga in Udon Thani

102.170