Memorial Day Parade

Memorial Day Parade, pencil, 12 x 16 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski
Memorial Day Parade, pencil, 12 x 16 © Bernadette E. Kazmarski

The sun shines at full volume on the brick street,
The American Legion has equipped everyone with a small American flag on a stick;
Children race around waving their flags
While adults carefully hold their flags,
Mill around looking for a good place to open folding chairs
Waiting for the parade to start.
Politicians roll by in fancy cars and fat shriners on tiny little cycles,
Floats from the Viet Nam War and the VFW,
Cheerleaders and dancers and a polka band
Police bagpipers and Civil War re-enactors and Marines,
Color guards from organizations we’ve never heard of,
Music and car horns and loudspeakers blending into each other as they pass,
Fire trucks, police cars, ambulances from every community around
And we wave and cheer for each of them,
Glad to know that there is someone who will risk their lives for us
on all these levels.

For some reason I always get choked up when I see
The high school marching band,
So seriously playing some arrangement they’d never otherwise listen to
And have spent months learning to play on their instrument,
Marching together in nearly perfect alignment,
Soon to take their places in a bigger parade.

poem copyright © 2009 Bernadette E. Kazmarski

Even though Memorial Day was founded to memorialize the losses of the Civil War, it came to be an important day of remembrance for our losses in successive wars as conflicts came nearly every other decade in the century following.

My parents’ generation called Memorial Day “Decoration Day”. It was the weekend to clear away the weeds, trim the grass, and spend time in the cemetery, and the graves of family members were decorated with wreaths and flags and freshly planted flowers, veterans or not. I’m not sure how it had lost the origin for them of remembering those who had died in service to their country but perhaps it had been the European tradition carried on in this country. For me it was a day to think about the grandparents whose difficult lives were over before I could remember them, and think about my parents as children.

I’m not one for parades, but I took my mother to the parades in our town for years, as well as my brother. I amused myself by taking photos of what everyone else was doing, memorializing their actions and reactions of the day.

Prints of the pencil sketch “Memorial Day Parade” are available in the “My Home Town” gallery on PortraitsOfAnimals.net.


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