360+5 Cycle of the Thirty Dozen Days Resets

[Joe Gensle]

Moisture has settled the earth, randomly embossing outlines of the gravedigger's trade across the ground in the waning light of Sunday night's dusk at Kentucky Veterans Central Cemetery.

Swarms of volunteers have collected the little flags from each gravesite, removed plastic flowers and other remembrances left by mourners and those who simply came to pay respect.

November's chill is fast descending, as fast as the falling sun, over the fallen sons and husbands, fathers and grandfathers buried in what's been called 'hallowed ground,' a term also used for battlefields where dead boys earn the more comfortable synonym, 'casualties.'

From atop the hill at gravesite D-231, left-to-right and right-to-left headlight beams occasion Kentucky's Highway 31 West, to and through Fort Knox.

My brother Jack's spirit rests his ethereal back against his marble headstone, thankful for remembrances and prayers on Veteran's Day, from near and far and home.

He is not a haunt or a ghost, but a cortege lookout, just another sentry of another era of another war of young men, awaiting arrivals of those who stand sentry this night, in peril around the globe, awaiting the next generation of those to arrive for rest here, content to know his little brother has requested to share this same serene field of mortal finality.

 

 

[Teresa]

Another lovely six, written in the same voice deep from the heart.  The most poignant part of this, to me, are the plastic flowers and little flags.  Like one small teardrop in the ocean.