Winner of the Purple Heart

by Marty Eberhardt

Tall, fair, athletic, an excellent student

He was headed,

By everyone’s calculation,

For greatness.

The habit of discipline kept him achieving

After the war, but it could not stay his hand

From the bottle.

He was the war hero who cried

As he shoveled a dead squirrel

Into the garbage,

The man whose hands shook

On the steering wheel

As he drove across a bridge.

He listened, of an evening,                  

To opera,

Eyes martini-soft with memories.

His family watched for the soft eyes,

Then the sudden angers.

The irony pricked them:

His anaesthetic grew their pain.

How many hearts

Lie bruised like his

In the breasts of soldiers?

How many of their children

Speak with a steady voice

Belying their tremors.

Let us not forget

To add them

To the spreadsheets of statistics

Detailing the costs of war.

* * * * *

"Winner of the Purple Heart" was first published in the 2015 edition of The Guilded Pen, the annual anthology of the San Diego Writers and Editors Guild