Post Parade

Lastly comes the stiff bristle brooms

to sweep up the happy debris

scattered confetti, deflated balloon skins, and corn popped,

dropped, and forgotten between concrete curb and street.

The youngest children, still whimpering from the paint-face clowns

and forbidden spun-sugar candy,

block their ears to the syncopated thump boom crash

of the drum corps.

Braver kids outshout the cymbals, laughing, until prompted

stand to salute, with still pudge-dimpled hands,

the wheeled and bony sad men whose

carcass chests weigh heavy with heroics long forgotten.

They too cry.

The soft gray coo of mourning doves,

the delicate breath of a dragonfly,

the trembling of the ginkgo leaf,

in an unfelt breeze

that will soon still.

Fierce then comes the piercing shots,

twenty-one,

fired into the dusking sky.

Sparklers lit and twirled

form the names of the brave

before fading into the twilight,

while those remaindered feel only the fantom pain of the missing,

like dropped limbs,

brooms cannot sweep away.

Note: There is always something sad to me about the aftermath of parades. The remains of the celebration, whether it's pride, independence, holidays, wars won, are left in the gutter then swept away and forgotten by most until the next flashy-noisy event. Remembering those not there to celebrate, the friends gone to AIDS, war, or time, makes the fleeting moments shine brighter.