Ode to Flagpole

Ode to Flagpole


I am:
The Staff of Freedom
Holding up our
Fallen compatriots
Soldiers giving
Their lives for
My
Precious cargo
The cannonade soars past
Me
Making waves on
My seas of cloth
The evils of each
Appropriate to
The other
Each fighting the war
For individuality
Millions being
Slaughtered
Under me
I:
Proudly wave
For troops defeated
Battles to tell about
Happening
Today, here
And now
Under me
Why does my
Payload
Have to be
The first
To go?
Picked out from
The army
Of others
I burn
Enemy fire threatens to
Knock me over
Ricochet the chain reaction
Of defeat
Sound the bugle;
I’m hit, we lost
Retreat, help me
The lost linger
In death’s grip
Fallen comrades,
Friends of
A
Different time
I hold up their
Memories, stitched into
My payload, live on
Through remembrance
And adoring the
Admiration of my
Ability to ascend
The atrocities of
Attrition to
A new level
I live on in spirit
One day,
I will stand proud
And support again
The symbol of a nation
Upon my breast
The upheaval
Around me
Causing turmoil
Once more a
New battle
I stand sentry for
A generation
Of cynics
Watching, witnessing
Revolutions abounding
Around me
Yet throughout
It all;
I stand, humbly
Embracing the truth
Embodied, entwined
In my friend’s
Intricate stitches
Fifty stars of gold,
Cry freedom to the world
Thirteen stripes of
Red and white
Show the world of our
Fight through the night
A lesson I help demonstrate
By holding ground,
Unwavering, tall and still as
A giant sequoia
Silently, in solitude
I display my most worthy
Memories on the end of a pole
I am: unchanging.