For my mother, and her fallen soldier

This one is easy. It's Veteran's Day, and first and foremost, I always think of Pete, my mother's first husband. Her first love. Her first heartbreak. He was a Marine who died in the Vietnam war.

I wrote this poem years ago (for a poetry class my last semester in college -- yes, that many years ago), and even then, I knew it was some of the most original, most amazing work that I had ever put to paper (and the only poem of mine my teacher liked)...in the library, with a spiral notebook, assignment in mind (to write a poem about a memory). I remember looking down to begin writing...and then nothing else until I looked up. And it was complete. And good. I remember nothing of composing each line. It had just appeared. Like it had been there all along...

I haven't changed a word since. This one is for my mother, and the soldier she lost all those years ago. I celebrate them both.

A Sketch for Mother

I'd come without an umbrella. I think
there was a moment when I realized why I'd come at all --
not for me --
for Mother. She'd never been -- never really even told Dad she'd wanted to.
That was something they didn't discuss.
And the rain that day was so cold.
The wool of my blue pea coat chafed my damp goose-pimpled skin
and I'd felt like my grandmother as I used my scarf to cover my hair and ears.
It was the rain, I knew, but it seemed as though something else
had forced me -- and all the other gray people -- to 
walk with bowed heads and downcast eyes.
White stone statues, cement blocks -- even the grass -- turned gray and dirty under the cloud light.
And yet I remember the marble still shined. Cold and hard, almost vindictive.
Water ran down the face in rivulets. Like some great stone creature at weep -- I remember thinking.
Deep deep black that could somehow still reflect people against the 
hazy sky -- people that stood in front of it
as if only looking at their own faces.
I don't remember the walk -- or how I even found it -- but suddenly
I was right in front of it -- looking at his name.
And I'd felt out of place and clumsy because I'd come empty-handed.
PEDRO LEON, JR.
Carved neatly in a line of a section of a wall on a lawn.
Lined up neatly amongst a thousand other names -- all faceless, all gone.
Military to the last. 
And I remember running my fingers in the groove -- in the groove carved by the letters of his name.
       Who were you? What did you look like? 
       Why did you leave?
       How did you die?
       (And most clearly, most troubling)
       I would not be here if you were alive. 
      You died. I was born.
A soggy piece of paper in the depths of my pocket -- found it and placed it
over his name -- covering it -- burying it -- pencil shaded over it.
PEDRO LEON, JR.
was now on the paper.
I'd had to look up to see his name -- and the rain had soaked my upturned face.
I'd never known him. Wouldn't. Couldn't.
My God, My Country, My Family -- his Code of Life remained only as an etch in a wall that marked
his death.
And suddenly the enormity of what he'd done -- what he'd given -- penetrated the chill and left me
even colder
and the water on my face was no longer just rain.

I gave my mother that paper with the smeared scribbled stencil on it.
I often wonder where she put it away.
And if she ever takes it out to run her fingers over the letters like I did.
And if she ever bows her head unconsciously like I did.
And if she ever cries tears for a lost man friend lover husband soldier. 
Like I did.