William (Lad) Carrington used to ride his Harley from North Carolina to participate in Rolling Thunder and one day he discovered the open mic venue at the Memorial Day Writers’ Project. Lad is an author, journalist, poet, historian, and ex radio announcer.
Around our Nation’s Capitol
In Washington DC
Are monuments and statues
To those who shaped our history
Some are tall and mighty
Their grandeur unsurpassed
They remind us of the stature
Of our leaders from the past
The monuments are gigantic
Like the spirits there portrayed
Jefferson, Washington, and Lincoln
Among those who paved our way
But there are some more subtle
Around the National Mall
Three that aren’t so high — just long
They are only simple walls
These walls don’t reach to lofty heights
With figures looking down
They are low and simple in design
And snake along the ground
They don’t inspire cheers and shouts
Provoke quiet respect instead
These tributes enshrine the ones who sleep
In the Bivouac of the Dead
Inscribed along each granite face
Each carved with skill and care
The names of those who laid their lives
Upon freedom’s alter there
They paid the ultimate sacrifice
Our country asked them for
They paid for freedom — ours today
That they never would enjoy
Our Nation’s National Treasure
Is the life-blood of its youth
It’s more valuable than gold or oil
More precious than right or truth
Columbia’s grown sad and weary
She needs peace now most of all
She doesn’t want another sacrifice
And we don’t need another Wall
We’re in a brand new era
The country’s in a daze
Our hearts are all inspired
Our spirits in ablaze
We stand together holding hands
We’re thinking now as one
For nothing so united us
As the hell of 911
We got back up and standing
Dusted off and struck right back
We made our enemy hurt and cry
For their cowardly attack
Now we have some brand new heroes
In uniforms and suits
Some had tried to stop the perps
Some just doing what they do
Some were sent to foreign lands
To stop the infidel
Some others went to despot town
To ring the Freedom Bell
But there are other heroes
From not so long ago
They went away - their duty strong
Where they were asked to go
They didn’t fight a techno war
Or wrap it up in days
They didn’t die in handfuls
They fell in scores along the way
It wasn’t over in a few weeks
Took ten long years instead
Sixty thousand girls and boys
Were left behind or dead
They didn’t get the hero’s due
No laurels round their brow
Our nation turned its face away
They are still owed even now
No ticker tape parades in town
Just some statues and a wall
God bless those folks from yesterday
They’re my heroes after all.
Do you know who I am?
You should for I am part of you
My spirit is forever entwined with yours
And my name is written on a wall.
Do you know me yet?
I once lived and breathed as you
I loved — and someone loved me
And now my name is written on a wall.
But that wall is not all there is of me
For I am a part of all that you are
And you carry me with you
Unseen — as I travel in the wind
My love for our land has taken me many places
Most with names I’d never heard
And I left a part of me at each place
And I left a part of you there too
I was at Alamance and Anzio
I fell at Gettysburg and bled on both sides
at The Little Bighorn
I slept in French mud Korean snow and sand near Baghdad
And my life ended in Asia leaving my name —
written on a wall
Perhaps you failed to notice as I passed by you
Sometimes I was a man and sometimes a woman
My face in shades of white, red, black, and yellow
And wearing uniforms of homespun, blue, gray,
buckskin, and olive
Do you know me now?
I was called to pay with my life
A heavy tax to bear — but freedom is costly
And only you can make it worth the price
You must make my sacrifice have value
For I am a part of you and your freedom
I am your past, your present, and your future
I am not just monuments or numbers in a history book
And I am not — Just A Name On A Wall.