War Memorial Poem by Leslie Philibert

Pale ghosts trapped in stone;
thin with granite, black
and dry and filled with bone

no longer short-sleeved
to bale hay, longing
for the soft touch of blond summer

and the thin beer of the fields,
warm and sky-red in evening;
a ring of long-chained children

caught in a dark obelisk
a hand of parting faint with flowers
still and unlearning as the years fade.