The War Memorial

I Ten laps around my town’s small park had become routine, and by habit I entered it by way of the new war memorial. Yet I never stopped to read a single brass lettered name raised on tall bronze plaques nor goaded to do so by conscience or patriotism. My rationale, then as now, has always been: reading rows of war dead names is as pointless as running my fingertips over raised braille dots. II Laps completed and breathing heavily I rested on one of several benches placed around the oval reflecting pool, my gaze cast over its dark placid water drinking in the day’s diminishing light, my mind soaking in the evening’s peace and tranquility. But not for long. For on many evenings my peace of mind was disturbed by thoughts of those rows of lettered dead names, a few I had known in the flesh many years earlier before they were shipped off to Vietnam to die there, young blood soaking foreign soil when my country and town were divided by chaos and discord not since the Civil War. III The issue was always the same with me: Why war? Why evil? I struggled with frustration to understand their dark wellsprings? In history’s rabid continuum of war and violence peace had become no better than a temporary pain-killer, at best a deceptive placebo. Religion, an evil catalyst and willing accomplice siding with hawkish politicians and patriots, proclaiming us sons of Adam, whereas I saw war’s true lineage differently, our true father Cain. My inability to understand what seemed beyond understanding, ten laps did nothing to boost my brain with answers, except infuse it with a fresh supply of oxygen, leaving my questions to fester in a limbo of ignorance. With irreconcilable answers, I left the park – as I often did – by its gateless back entrance. Was it to avoid those mute dead names, or was it more likely to avoid another confrontation with myself and wrenching questions which offered me no answers?