Odin's Birds/Walking the Wall
Pulled one perfect day from the heart of summer,
Went with my wife, the kids, a friend
Down to cruise the monuments
To study those menhirs we set for marking passage
Into collective memory.
We ascended the virile spire
Erected in honor of our ponytailed First Elect,
The children pleased to gaze out on a toy city below us.
We descended and walked down the long flat mirror of water
To where Lincoln, strong and sad in bronze
Sits forever troubled by his sundered nation
In his cool, dark, echoing vault.
Then lunch, and a visit to the commemoration of our most recent sorrow;
We cross over and walk the Wall.
Row on row,
Stark white upon shining black
The rollcall of the dead processes by.
It's crowded today, but no one speaks
The silence here is a crashing thing that falls all around us
As we walk and search
Some for names, some for answers,
Some for both, or neither
Ourselves for I know not what.
And in the black
Flowing past the names, and names, and names
This perfect day hangs captured in its light:
Cotton clouds on blinding blue
Grass greener than new money
The faces of children, dogs
And a parade of young couples -
It all hangs there, flowing over the terrible list,
Reminding all how they should be here too,
Those not-so-long-ago lost.
But then, in a sense, they are here
And that's why the silence crashes so.
58,000 empty chairs are here.
58,000 phantoms,
The Bad Conscience of a good nation.
58,000 Not-To-Bes are here:
Not-To-Be husbands, fathers, family, friends
Not-To-Be Victories and Not-To-Be Dreams
58,000 horrors of Loss.
In the midst of these shuddering reveries
My blissfully distracted 7 year-old son
Plucks a small, perfect feather off the lawn,
As black and glossy as the wall itself,
And carries it idly along.
Once out, we stop to talk with one of the Fallen's many advocates,
A great Viking of a man who notices the feather
Who says right away,
"Ah, a raven's feather. Odin's birds, who bring him Wisdom and Rememberance."
I saved the feather, knowing what I do of ravens:
Those sombre, croaking birds,
First on the field after battle
I stroked its silky black and wished
Odin's birds would visit the common folk more often
And croak to us of Remembrance, and Wisdom.
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