this diary is dedicated to all who suffer because of war and other disasters

we honor courage in all its forms

cross-posted at DailyKos, Booman Tribune, European Tribune, and My Left Wing.

image and poem below the fold

Families wait with open coffins to receive the bodies of killed family members from a local morgue, Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2006, in Baghdad, Iraq. On Tuesday police found the bodies of 11 handcuffed, blindfolded men inside a truck near the Ghazaliyah district of western Baghdad. Their identities were unknown but it appeared the men may have been the victims of sectarian death squads.
(AP Photo/Mohammed Uraibi)

The Dead
by Joan Aleshire

In poems I read, “the dead” always appear
as collective noun: gray mass without feature,
to be feared or made fun of, and so to be
erased, as if we hadn’t once loved or fought
with them, as if we won’t end the same.

What was left of you sprawled–shapeless
mass of ash, such a dark gray–in the plastic bag
we came to bury, Pete cutting a neat square
in the turf old graveyard grass becomes–moss,
ferns, even violets blanketing the mounds–
next to your father’s headstone, closer to him
in death than you’d wanted all your life to be.

Mother, brother, brothers-in-law, sisters,
nephews, nieces, and I who had known you
best in faltering and urgencies, the slow
steady heat of your engine heart, the rank innocence
of your workman’s sweat: we came with mason jars
and each took a last remnant of you, even in this
never “the dead,” not the gray feathers
of wood-ash, more like sand we might collect
from a rare beach we visited once,
always yourself: this dense powder
you have come to.

– – –
put a meaningful magnet on your car or metal filing cabinet

read Ilona’s important diary at MLW – Returning Vet PTSD – One Soldier’s Story as well her comprehensive series on PTSD and Iraq War vets.

view the pbs newshour silent honor roll (with thanks to jimstaro at booman.)

take a private moment to light one candle among many (with thanks to TXSharon)

support Veterans for Peace
support the Iraqi people
support the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict (CIVIC)
support CARE
support the victims of torture
remember the fallen
support Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors – TAPS
support Gold Star Families for Peace
support the fallen
support the troops
support Iraq Veterans Against the War
support Military families Speak Out
support the troops and the Iraqi people
read This is what John Kerry did today, the diary by lawnorder that prompted this series
read Riverbend’s Bagdhad Burning
read Dahr Jamail’s Iraq Dispatches
read Today in Iraq
witness every day