A SOLDIER FROM OUR TOWN

Do not go gentle into that good night
Old age should burn and rave at the close of day;
Said the poet of his dying father
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Uniformed men at the door
We are sorry to inform you…
… died for his country.

What are parents to say of their child
Killed in Iraq at age twenty?

Who then is to burn and rave?
At whom?

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
wailing and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
She refused to be consoled,
Because they are no more.”

No parent should lose a child
How could one ever be ready?

How could the grief be greater
Except that the child died
In a war that never should have been?

Remember Cindy Sheehan, Gold Star Mother of
Casey, killed in Iraq, April 4, 2004?

Outside the ranch in May 2005
She raged not against the dying of the light
But at those who made the war.

But rage has its limits
Especially when shared by so few
I am going to go home and
be a mother to my surviving children
and try to regain some of what I have lost.

Vilified by supporters of the war
Who could not feel a mother’s pain
Or rage at a child lost
Let alone
In a war that should never have been.

Protected, insulated, and shielded
By irrational righteousness
I can’t imagine the President
Burning or raging against these needless deaths.

But I wonder about General Petraeus and others
Whose commands send soldiers into harm’s way.
Away from the spotlight of their political role,
What do they feel?

I wonder about the rest of us
What do we feel?
Now that It’s the economy, Stupid!
Do we burn and rage
Against a war that should never have been?

- Milo