For almost two years while in the Navy, I had the privilege of serving as a member of the Joint Service Honor Guard, performing military funeral honors.

Much of my honor guard duty was spent at the Dallas-Fort Worth National Cemetery, where the funeral business could get quite busy.

This piece is about burying bodies and the inherent cost of those bodies.

– Sif

(Photo: Sif/Aaron Seaman, Tahoma National Cemetery, Washington State, 2021)

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Friday, 1/2/2009, 0223

I have buried bodies.
Bodies upon bodies
upon bodies
put them in the ground
flag covered
coffin shut
vault sealed.

And at last count
somewhere near 300 veterans
have been lowered
and bid farewell
by my hands
and my blue eyes
passed off as nylon dyed blue and red
to the next of kin.

All bid a hearty farewell to my
paragraph robot speech
down on one knee
at the foot of monumental grief
and institutional disbelief
folded union jack in trade
for years given
to one country’s expendable view
of human life.

Who is this
who has such tragic predestination
they who have such intimate confidence
that the human soul
flesh and bone
and our eternal Self is not worth
but the mere price of oil.

Bones out, bones in.
Always bones.

And the ringing of the bugle
and the firing of the 5.56 mm M16 blanks
seven times three
in unison
with crisp precision
and epic funeral procession
borrowing VA death benefits
befitting of those who fought the good fight
but in the end
lost to the ultimate reality.

Some were fat
and some not so much
and some were bikers
and some were not
a few were grandfathers
or mothers
and one was a young female sailor
coming home to Texas
in grand style
betraying the gravity of the irony:
knowing that she would have come home
to much less than a hero’s welcome
had she only come home alive…

One was a family member
who had served us
not only as a core staple of our family
but also as founding member of the Greatest Generation
when things went so crazy
that the entire planet
threatened to plunge itself
down the grave
in one
final
attempt
to stop the violence.

And the pictures of her
still fill pages in photo albums
that take up space on coffee tables

And the memory of lowering number 301
who was one of my own
still haunts my semantic spaces—
crying father, aunt, and grandmother looked on
as I did what I was taught:
– Stare straight
– Salute crisply
– No emotion
precision movement of so many bodies
so many deaths
revealing my position as undertaker
for those souls bound for Aksardahm
or other stops
in other verses
alien to our own.

With great care did I usher the voluminous dead
from this world
to the next
and for many years
have I grieved silently for each one
and each family
feeling the pangs of longing
for those beings
separate
but intimately connected to me
because they are me.

When one dies
I die
and when one is born
I am born again, baptized in unity
and we are reunited
(though we were never apart).

Bones in, bones out.
Always just bones…