Breeze sways
spattered poppies
long after the sniper
is gone —
dark falls on a corpse.
*
Ravaged meat
in a box:
Special Delivery.
Worms finish
what maggots started.
*
He watches her kneel
in the wet grass
at his grave,
crying for herself
in her long black veil+.
*
Three nights she dreams
of red sands and blue eyes.
On the fourth day, they come
in uniforms,
hats in their hands.
*
He’s a ghost father
to a stranger,
the infant he watches;
dying again
when the man dons a uniform.
“Martha” is written and performed by Greg Miller. The song is on Dutch Henry’s album, “1973.”
In honor of the fallen.
+taken from the song, “The Long Black Veil”
Frank J. Tassone is the host of Haikai Challenge. Frank says:
This week, write the haikai poem of your choice (haiku, senryu, haibun, tanka, haiga, renga, etc.) that alludes to Memorial Day.
Grace is today’s host of dVerse’ Open Link Night.
Tao Talk 
A poignant poem Li
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Thank you, Sadje.
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You’re welcome
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Sad…
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One day a year is not time enough to honor their lives or fill the empty spaces they left behind. Well said. (K)
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You’re right, one day a year is not enough.
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I read this last night but I didn’t dare comment. It’s powerful…and I saw the Long Black Veil…may be why I did it subconsciously.
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Thank you, Max, very glad you posted the song.
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I should probably thank you lol. I’ve wanted to post it forever.
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Reblogged this on Frank J. Tassone and commented:
#Haiku Happenings #2: Jade Li’s latest #tanka sequence for my current #haikai challenge!
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Dark, topical, poignant, this one assaults us, gut punch, uppercuts, jabs. I like the strength and the vision within it, and I like the creative way you expanded on traditional haiku, senryu, tanka parameters.
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Your comment is appreciated and humbling. To see someone sees means so much.
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A lovely and moving collection. The last 2 specially touched me.
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Thank you, Grace.
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I like your description of him watching her.
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Thank you, Frank.
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kaykuala
A stark reality for one in uniform. One has to accept the fact!
Hank
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yes 😦
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A moving series for memorial day. A dark reality that stirs the heart with a deep loss.
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Thank you, Truedessa, yes.
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Your poem takes me to Pete Seeger’s song Where Have All the Flowers Gone! Especially your last line… Full circle!
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Thanks for reading Dwight and for your wonderful comment.
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You are welcome!
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A poignant tanka sequence, Lisa, with some surprisingly stark imagery. These lines made me sit up:
‘Ravaged meat
in a box:
Special Delivery.
Worms finish
what maggots started’.
The central incongruous ‘Special Delivery’ packs a punch.
How tragic that the ‘ghost father’ can’t stop his little stranger son from repeating history.
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Thank you for your always appreciated comments, Kim.
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Really fine quintet of haiku beading a melancholy Memorial Day remembrance. Well done.
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Thank you, Brendan.
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I love that song – ever since I heard it as a little girl and memorized the words.- Of course I sang along. I think even before I knew the words it epitomized irony and poignancy for me. You always make me think- it’s a good Memorial Day poem beats skin-to-skin partying among the virus carriers! I was just contemplating the way we shove the reality of death aside (rarely having to witness it in person) and so mistakenly consider it something other than life – one process, one whole.
Our dead are dying alone now – un-witnessed.
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Christine, thank you and glad you connected with the poems and the music. It is a terrible thing we do, as you say, shove death aside. Every other creature takes it as part of the whole, why not us. Dying alone, un-witnessed, is maybe the worst part of it all 😦
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What a lovely and poignant set of poems… wonderful
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Thank you, Bjorn.
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