Pacificist Reflections on Veterans' Day

A Pacificist Reflections

 on Veterans' Day

I hate war and all its waste;

The nations ruined and lives erased.

I wish there to be no need

For troops that armed conflicts breed.

I never want to make war.

When young, I refused what I abhor.

As years have passed, others went,

To have their minds and bodies be spent.

I now look back at my hopes

In light of how the real world copes.

To wish away an evil thing

Does naught to remove reality's sting.

My Dad went, but never spoke,

Of the flames of war that evils stoke.

To hate the fight, not who fought,

Is what time and life to us has taught.

It doesn't please me they must serve,

But I feel the thanks that they deserve.

I may hope a world at peace,

But they stand ready until wars cease.

How may I help that to be?

The answer has always eluded me.

It is the goal that is wrong

In its certainty for which we long.

The world has no absolutes

And we will forever have our disputes.

From playground to globally,

We will find reasons to disagree.

As we mature, maybe if,

With cooler minds, we'll avoid the cliff.

But in our kind will still be

That looming bit of geography. (pathology?)

Prepared or not, we will fight;

Little pause to ask if we are right.

When over that human brink,

We will struggle to make ourselves think.

So, it is necessity

That I concede to reality,

My debt for unwanted needs

So ably met by veterans' deeds.