Of Joyce Kilmer and War

Whenever he went to Suffern along the Erie track,
he saw a poor old farmhouse, crumbling, broken, and black.
It touched his deep compassion to see it falling apart,
so, he wrote a poem about it, revealing his tender heart.

He was a man of talent with a selfless, empathic soul.
The many poems and skills he shared proved goodness was his goal.
As a husband and a father, a man just in his prime,
he agreed to join his countrymen to oppose aggressors’ crime.  

He caught a sniper’s bullet in a country far away
in a war not of his making. A great man was lost that day.
It was a war so brutal, they said it would end them all.
But, alas, that’s not what happened. Many millions more would fall.

Rich and powerful men from their lofty, sheltered throne,
will sacrifice the lives of others, but will not risk their own
If the men who want to start a war, were the ones who had to go,
we might just see an end to it, and young men could live and grow.