The flowers once gay have wilted and died,
Green sod turned yellowed and browned,
The echoes of volleys have faded away,
On the air with Taps mournful sound.

His mother wants to think he died a hero,
His father wants to think he stood to fight,
Like John Wayne in the Sands of Iwo Jima,
Not sitting in a bar one Saigon night.

He never saw his daughter born that Tuesday,
He never saw her laughing on his knee,
He never saw her try to catch a baseball,
He never heard her bubbling with glee.

Another man would scoop her up and hold her,
And kiss away her tears and skinned up knee,
Another man would push her to the heavens,
Her ship a board with ropes hung from a tree.

She and her dad would go to see her father,
Each May they’d take the flowers to his stone,
She’d stand there with her dad and with her mother,
All four together, and each one alone.

Her Dad would see her going off to college,
To learn to fly she took ROTC,
He’d posed with her the bars pinned to her collar,
Proud and scared as when she climbed that tree.

They laid her in the meadow next her father,
His stone has grayed, hers a new and shining white,
Her ship went down, her mission unaccomplished,
The flames lit up a dreary Baghdad night.