Parade Rest
Parade Rest
By Joseph Zaccardi
Living in the past means to remember in the present for this
is about my stint on a Search & Rescue team in Nam when
my task back then was to determine first if the corpse was
intact or not and if not I was to gather their body parts
and personal items such as dog tags IDs and family snapshots
and enclose everything in a heavy-duty black rubberized
sack and this is how I lost parts of myself in those moments
as I think back on this task because I knew the intact bodies
and the bodies in parts would be shipped freezer-wrapped
back to their homes and families for military burials
attended by a detail of two honor guards in dress blues
whose duty was to remove the American flag from the
casket and fold it into a cocked three-corner hat so that the
stars were arrayed on both sides then one Marine would
surrender the flag to the bereaved and tell them the
president of these United States expresses his condolences
on the loss of their beloved one who faithfully defended
their country in the just cause of freedom while the other
Marine bugles Taps on behalf of a government who buries
bodies free of charge whether whole or in parts.
Joseph Zaccardi says to write a single poem is a selfless act and a minor miracle. But miracles, minor or otherwise, don’t happen by happenstance; they are engendered in part by hard work and in part by the generous help of others. In times of trouble people often turn to poems, and poems often turn into prayers. Joseph is author of Songbirds of the Nine Rivers, published by Sixteen Rivers Press, 2023.