Flag folded, presented.
Taps, mournful and haunting, seems yet to echo.
Soldiers, M-16s shouldered, march toward camouflaged humvess.


Up the hill,
away from the blue tent,
unmindful of the fine drizzle,
she walks among the granite tombstones, righting fallen flowers.
Alone. Dry-eyed. Young face grief-drawn.


Behind her,
groups of twos and threes straggle
in a broken line
up the hill to parked Lincolns, Cadillacs and SUVs.


At the cemetery's edge, she remembers; wheels,
looks at the gray casket not yet lowered; then turns
toward the mountain scarcely visible in the thickening rain,
her thin shoulders shaking.


Some things we shouldn't see; wish we hadn't.