Taps

The call of a bugle floats over a draped

casket even as the smell of gunpowder lingers

from a volley of rifles fired skyward, three times,

and the crisp snap of a flag renders its own salute.

Those twenty-four notes, mournfully echoed, raise up

the hero’s spirit now to the heavens, an old soldier of a long-ago

battle, bearing up until this final call cancels out the memories

he’s carried in secret, shared alone, what he saw and couldn’t

tell, never understood and fought to forget, or one newly fallen

on a distant field of his generation’s conflict, sacrificing

life and limb in the face of the fears he packed amidst his gear,

gear that couldn’t stop the bloodshed of marksmen and hidden

weapons, dead before the explosion imprinted itself

upon his memory, dead following the pain of limbs torn away,

human flesh and organs ripped apart by another as afraid, perhaps,

as he lying here dead, the call of a bugle floating over his draped

casket, twenty-four notes, mournfully echoed, raising up his spirit.