Million Dollar Baby

Your stone seems small among all the others.
"A bud on earth to bloom in heaven"
is the only comfort it offers
for the visitor to this lonely place.
Fifty six years is the half century
that seems like a millennium.
A time before my time, known only through
the unreliable memories of others.
A war that couldn't be called a war,
called the younger brothers
of the Second World War to fight,
maybe to die in a cold place,
and nobody knew why.
Young couples hoped for
their million dollar baby,
draft deferment and exemption for fatherhood,
Two lovers married early
and the love they made was you,
love transmuted to grief,
a swelling bud that withered,
never bursting open in the sun.
A tiny heart beating strong for a day,
fading like a distant light, so near to dawn.
What heart can carry an unbeating one
two days and not die of a hurt so deep,
never to feel or love again.
They wrapped you in your only blanket,
kissed their million dollar baby goodbye
and laid you softly in your tiny coffin.

I wonder if you know what they bought
with your million dollars.
The letter came, the army called,
the Philippines, not Korea, a GI bill PHD,
four more children and a happy life
with one early dark spot that never healed.
Everything that would have been
is someplace on another road,
back before the turn where they left you,
my unintended sacrifice,
who left me a mother who held me like gold,
delighted in my every scream,
just to know I was alive.

The young lovers are with you, now.
I hope they thank you,
for me. I appreciate all of it.