Today my thoughts are on Master Sergeant Joe D.
my brother who was four years younger than me.
Growing up Brother Joe was always the battler,
he took no one’s “stuff” and was never a prattler.
At twenty one I entered and Brother Joe came soon,
to the Army’s ways Joe seemed to quickly attune.
He rose to Master Sergeant in his twenty-three years,
four tours in Nam kept family in prayer and tears.
He was highly decorated and many proclaimed a hero,
but when life all boiled down it amounted to zero.
He disappeared from family for thirty plus years,
all this time we searched, prayed, and shed tears.
For his country he did things he couldn’t forget,
then died lost from family, in a sea of regret.
Joe isn’t there but a headstone marks his spot,
to remind of his surviving the Viet Cong onslaught.
His life is a shadowbox that hangs on our wall,
I’m reminded of Joe each time I enter the hall.
So today, I pray that for life choices he did atone,
as for me, Joe will never become as a forgotten stone.
Is she a prattler or a tattler?
I was unsure
My ears had stopped listening to her long ago
She was perpetually speaking
Her mouth probably talked in her sleep
When I saw her coming, I put in my earbuds
For not only was she annoying
You could not turn down her volume
Incessant chitchat, prattler, non-stop chatter.
Mouth kept going. Kids asked what was the matter.
Her own children knew
They laugh at my two.
Gossiping and gabbing makes her face fatter.