by Jo Ann Bennett

We received the following from a VBC Magazine reader who served as a nurse in Philadelphia. Jo Ann’s father was both an Army and a Navy veteran. The poem came as an inspiration after visiting Valley Forge and Gettysburg and thinking about all those who served and sacrificed over the generations. Jo Ann dedicates the poem to our veterans.

Memorial Day

The finest tribute we can pay

Unto our hero dead today,

Is not a rose wreath white and red

In memory of the blood they shed.

It is to stand beside each mound,

Reach couch of consecrated ground.

And pledge ourselves as warriors

True

Unto the world they died to do.

Into God’s valley where they lie

At rest, beneath the open sky.

Triumphant now, over every foe,

As living tributes let us go.

No wreath of rose or immortelles,

Or spoken word or tolling bells

Will do today, unless we give

Our pledge that liberty shall live.

Our hearts must be the roses red

We place above our hero dead.

Today beside their graves we must

Renew allegiance to their trust.

Must bear our heads and humbly say

We hold the flag as dear as they,

And stand, as once they stood to die,

To keep the Stars and Stripes on high.

The finest tribute we can pay

Unto our hero dead today,

Is not of speech roses red,

But living, throbbing hearts instead,

That shall renew the pledge they sealed

With death upon the battlefield,

That freedom’s flag shall bear no strain

And free men wear no tyrant’s chain.

Jo Ann Bennett