Roger G McDonald: ‘Omaha Beach’

Omaha Beach

Erect in ranks, they stand as they’d have stood—
Upright, attentive, disciplined—to hear
Their fatal orders for our fateful good.
Today, sun soothes them, placid, soft, sincere.
Mere shadows of the conflict—blood and fear—
Are left, and just a zephyr stirs the wood.

Their alabaster angles trick the eye.
Symmetric silence muffles history’s shells.
They’ve shed old rules. New edicts can’t apply
To statelessness where stateliness now dwells
In burial, and each inscription spells
Its code of separation to the sky.

These legions lost. Not all were heroes yet
Their comradeship in consecrated ground
Could not contain my sorrow or regret
That this would be the last place they are found
And no further. We file past, and the sound
Of grief’s hush pierces like a bayonet.

Roger G McDonald