I could just stare at this image
And I do
Often, and long
Alone
Mezmerized by a secret enchantment
I hide from family and friends—
My escape to this
singular island of contemplation.
What is it that so captures my eyes
Holds them fast
Makes me a hostage to such raw beauty?
After all,
it is only a distant rockpile,
unsteady and deformed.
But it is intoxicatingly bewitching.
I pose before this image,
trying to look my best
as nature, and nature’s God
take my picture.
I feel privileged,
just this band of soldiers
and me
Frozen in time,
locked in eternity’s gaze.
Simply analyzed,
It is a small band of soldiers
frantic to find a gap.
Pushing, jamming, urging
a mound of destruction to yield
They are all looking down,
working together —
too many, really, for the task.
I know this scene was staged
and I’ve seen the first one —
less dramatic for sure.
But this false hope, so honestly inspired,
so seizes my heart
that I throw myself into it
like a fanatic into a pagan religion.
God, I’m weeping!
Is it for these men, long dead?
For this war, long over?
I remember another Son
near the end of a cosmic battle,
lifting a rustic pole,
turned to the mourners:
“Do not weep for me.
Weep for yourselves
And for your children.”
So I obey HIm and
I weep for myself
For loving without feeling
For longing without depth
For sacrificing without hurt
For my silence
And for the shame to so cheaply live
in the shadow of this black silhouette
And I weep for our children,
Our sons who fight under no clear banner
No standard-bearer’s majesty comes to them
rising up to their hope over a distant rise
No flag to hoist, no glory to wave
No pledge to echo from their brown voices
But, oh! The sands of Nineveh would easily
give way to a wooden shaft
Just as they did on Golgotha’s hill
My mind drifts, wind-blown,
To the One sacrifice
that makes Iwo Jima
Iwo Jima
Lamar Howell's Weblog 