D-Day Poem by Dwight Jenkins

I saw a ghost in the glass of a museum case
Where the earth had been stabbed one last time
By the point of a knife, on the point of a gun
Now washed of its blood and it's grime

It stood mute in that place above Omaha Beach
As a symbol of all who had died
By the point of a knife, or the point of a gun
On that day when America cried

Ephemeral lines of a form without face
Tried to capture this moment in time
But the memories trapped in the glass of the case
We're all buried in soil, under lime

Hard as he tried on that spring day in France
The ghost couldn't fathom all this
Slowly he crept from the bluffs to the beach
Picking rocks from the Nazis' abyss

Turning them o'er in his hand the ghost strained
For the stirrings of life from within
And he cried as he sensed from the reddest of them
The sad soul of a soldier therein

A soldier whose life was cut short on that beach
As the first waves of men all went down within reach
Of the scant clumps of cover that might shelter them each
From the fire that poured from above

The blood from his body poured into this stone
As the German machine gun devoured flesh and bone
And the mid-western boy died right there, all alone
Not for country, or corps, but for love

Love for his mom, and his dad, and his town
Love for the men who, like him, had gone down
And love for the cause that had spun him around
To release the boy's soul, like a dove

'Oh, this I can grasp, ' cried the ghost, as he wept
Both this rock and this death now made sense
Though it took many years, many miles, many thoughts
Brought to France and translated in French

The breeze it soon shifted, blowing soft from the west
And the ghost was released from his pain
Like the boy, he departed, never more to return
But the rock lives, again and again...