Poem for Saturday, May 25, 2024
Memorial Day Parade
read by the author
The sun shines at full volume on the brick street,
The American Legion has equipped everyone with a small American flag on a stick;
Children race around waving their flags
While adults carefully hold their flags,
Mill around looking for a good place to open folding chairs
Waiting for the parade to start.
Politicians roll by in fancy cars and fat shriners on tiny little cycles,
Floats from the Viet Nam War and the VFW,
Cheerleaders and dancers and a polka band
Police bagpipers and Civil War re-enactors and Marines,
Color guards from organizations we’ve never heard of,
Music and car horns and loudspeakers blending into each other as they pass,
Fire trucks, police cars, ambulances from every community around
And we wave and cheer for each of them,
Glad to know that there is someone who will risk their lives for us
on all these levels.
For some reason I always get choked up when I see
The high school marching band,
So seriously playing some arrangement they’d never otherwise listen to
And have spent months learning to play on their instrument,
Marching together in nearly perfect alignment,
Soon to take their places in a bigger parade.
poem copyright © 2009 Bernadette E. Kazmarski
Even though Memorial Day was founded to memorialize the losses of the Civil War it came to be an important day of remembrance for our losses in successive wars as well, as conflicts came nearly every other decade in the century following.
My parents' generation called Memorial Day "Decoration Day" as it had originally been to decorate the graves of those lost in the Civil War and then in each war following. It was the weekend to clear away the weeds, trim the grass and spend time in the cemetery, and the graves of family members were decorated with wreaths and flags and freshly planted flowers. We took some red geraniums around to plant on my parents' parents' graves.
I'm not sure how it had lost the origin for them of remembering those who had died in service to their country because nearly everyone in my parents' generation was touched by World War II either in service or the hardships of living through the War years, and the friends who had not come home.
For me it became a day to think about the grandparents whose difficult lives were over before I could remember them and think about my parents as children with their parents.
I'm not much for parades but my mother loved them as did my brother and I took both of them to the parades in our town for years even after my mother had moved to a personal care home. I situated them and then amused myself by taking photos of what everyone else was doing, memorializing their actions and reactions to the day. I have those memories now and possibly that's another thing the day is for, to make new memories to carry on.
This poem is illustrated with a sketch of mine in pencil called "Memorial Day Parade," drawn from one of the many photos I took in all those years of parade attendance, the good old traditional parade on the good old traditional Main Street in my hometown of Carnegie Pennsylvania. When it was over my mother brother and I folded up our chairs and packed them in the car. Going out for an ice cream sunday afterward topped it off.
Each year our community had held an art exhibit called Carnegie Painted for artwork depicting images of Carnegie. I decided to use one of the photos and do this sketch in pencil rather than the usual pastel or watercolor that I would use. I feel so connected to World War II through my parents and my other relatives from that generation that I chose to use a style of drawing from World War II cartoons which I had practiced and really enjoyed. When I look at the sketch now, even though it doesn't have all the colors of the day, it still brings it all back to me. Now my mother and brother and my father are gone but I have those memories of attending the parade and all the thoughts that went through my head at the time.
I did not lose any relatives in any conflict but World War II certainly marked all of our lives. I always take some time on the day to think about the people who lived those experiences and who lost their lives in conflict away from home and away from loved ones. I hope that someday there will be no more losses from war.
Thank you for listening.
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