Fields without Footsteps

They left in weather that could not decide

between rain and dust,

boots darkened by roads

that would never learn their names.

Some carried photographs

creased soft at the corners,

some carried jokes sharpened for the march,

some carried silence

like a second pack upon the shoulders.

Morning found them in smoke,

in rivers split by bridges of fire,

in deserts where the horizon shimmered

like a promise no one could keep.

And still they moved forward.

Not because fear had abandoned them,

but because someone beside them

needed one more pair of hands,

one more heartbeat refusing to turn away.

Now the flags lift in slow wind.

Now bugles scatter their lonely brass

across cemeteries stitched with stone.

Children trace unfamiliar surnames

with careful fingers.

The dead do not answer.

Yet every quiet town keeps speaking for them:

porch lights burning after midnight,

empty chairs at reunion halls,

medals resting cold in dresser drawers.

Memorial Day arrives carrying flowers,

but underneath the petals

stands the harder thing—

the cost measured in unfinished lives,

in birthdays that never crossed another calendar,

in voices stopped mid-sentence

on distant ground.

So today we remember them

not as statues,

not as stories polished smooth by time,

but as human beings

who laughed loudly,

ached deeply,

dreamed of returning home,

and never did.