They lie in green fields lost and lone
washed in dark oceans and cold seas
in rice paddies and river bends
on golden beach strands and in the coves
rocky and cool in the shadows.

No headstones or markers remain
but the overarching trees, the headland stones
whereon last they laid their heads, unknowing.
Snowdrift prayers over whitened bones
dunes of drifting sand under which they lie.

The breathing and breathtaking world
is memorial for all the fallen, taken away
who become again grainy mineral and spirit.
They now and still extend the forgiveness of death
to the millions more who will die in senseless war.

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Portland, Oregon – May 30, 2021.

From Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address: “It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”