This Memorial Day poem honors a cousin and thereby all who served.
When does the war end?
Remembering a cousin
Short and stocky,
He bounced when he walked.
Forearms as big as Dempsey‘s,
Whose twelve inch punch
Could crush a man’s skull.
“You ought to be a boxer,”
His uncles urged.
Guadalcanal in November
Nineteen forty-two
Changed things.
The bow of his ship,
The New Orleans,
Blown apart in the Battle of
Tessofaronga—sweet-sounding
Name of the burial waters
Where hundreds of boys—
Navy men—lie sleeping.
A miracle, the doctors
Told him. “Your life’s been
Spared.” The shrapnel that
Crashed into his eye
Never reached his brain.
But it left a hole.
That wasn’t the end of Leo’s war.
He never sailed a battle cruiser
Again, but his war
Went on and on.
On Armistice Day, back home,
Parades celebrated on Colfax Avenue
And on every Main Street in America.
Mayors and senators and the President
And generals and admirals declared
“Peace is here, War is over.”
We cheered and waved our hands
Holding American flags.
Leo’s war continued.
He fought the ghosts that haunted
His days and nights. Searched for
Love he never found.
At the end, runaway cancer cells
Found him.
With ninety proof meds
His daily portion,
He fought for fifty years.
His war never ended.
He stopped fighting.
(c) Phil Hefner 5/27/2019
liftthescreen 
Thank you Phil for this powerful piece. It is a sad day, but poetry that makes the loss particular and personal is needed. The world news these last few days points to a hardening of national boundaries and hearts. Such a hardening might even set the stage for another catastrophic war – one ending not only millions of particular lives, but perhaps also destroying this particular planet we call our personal home.