A Son Arrives Home to Mother

By Jason Sharp

A day like any other
A son arrives home to mother
A folded flag on his lead-lined urn
Come from the Gulf, where the oil fields burn

A patriot lost to Red machinations
A hero lost in the great clash of nations
The chaplain’s eulogy is generic and brief
It does not allay the mother’s profound grief

He signed up as a mechanic
Amidst Democracy’s great panic
He went to war in the gunnery room
Of an air cruiser bearing nuclear doom

When Jetpack troopers assaulted Kirkuk
High overhead, his air cruiser shook
Dodging air to air rockets and Soviet flak
He kept the guns firing to support the attack

Boarded by the enemy over dusty Helmand
He wielded hammer and wrench in grim hand to hand
Fought them till they could stomach no more
Piling up their broke bodies at the gunnery room door

The captain learned of his valor and what he had done
Arranged for promotion, gave him control of a gun
So in the clear blue skies over gutted Tabriz
He swatted Red fighters as if they were fleas

But south of Tehran, the atomics started to fly
And caught in a blastwave did his air cruiser die
Months later, ground troops secured its skeletal wreck
And collected his ashes from the gunnery deck

Gone from the living, gone from the fight
He among thousands came home on one flight
So the Air Corps could return him back to his mother
To put on a shelf, next to his brother.