BY SHARON MARTIN

Two portraits hung

in Grandma’s living room,

both in oval frames.

One was Grandpa Edge,

handsome in his cavalry uniform.

World War I.

Jockey-small and horse savvy,

he didn’t join

to become a muleskinner.

We serve where we are sent.

The other was of his oldest son.

Lawrence quit school to fight.

The story I heard was

he jumped into a mined foxhole

in Belgium in 1944.

The story I knew was

Grandma and Pap, still heartbroken

twenty years out.

I wasn’t a mother then. It took

another twenty years for me

to understand their pain and their gratitude

that another of their handsome sons

came home.

When Uncle Junior was an old man

He told me he saw Iwo Jima

from a hospital ship, soldiers dug in

on the beach.

When he got to shore, he realized

they weren’t dug in but dead.

He carried the memory of Lawrence with him

as he picked up

and patched up the fallen,

served out the war.

Another Memorial Day

I skip the parades.

I don’t celebrate so much

as I remember

both the mourners

and the mourned.

–Sharon Edge Martin lives in Oilton, OK and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer