The Quiet After the Bugle

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The evening fades and quiet fills the room with shade.

An empty chair still waits beside the silent door.

Soft sunbeams wander slowly through the dusty air,

Touching the walls where echoes of his laughter live.


A weathered frame still guards the memory of his smile,

Unchanged by years and unseen tears she keeps inside.

They said he marched with courage bright beneath the flag;

Now folded colors rest above his quiet grave.


The bugle called across a sky too wide for grief,

And pride and sorrow tangled deep within her hands.

Morning arrives with gentler steps than once before;

His boots no longer stand in patience by the door.


The kettle sings a lonely song for only one,

While two small voices call her name with hopeful eyes.

She braids their hair and mends the seams of growing days,

And reads again the letters softened by her tears.


“Soon I’ll return,” the final fading promise says-

A line that time has left unanswered in the blue.

Each year she walks among the rows of silent stone

And lays a flower bright against the quiet grass.


The wind moves through like whispers of remembered names.

Sometimes her tears fall softly in the evening air.

Yet in her heart a steady flame refuses night;

His love remains the distant star that guides her on.


Within the children’s smiles she sees tomorrow rise,

A living echo of the man they still become.

So she will stand through shadowed years and silent pain-

For love once given never truly fades away.

"A soldier’s courage is measured in medals; a mother’s courage is measured in the soft braids of the children who carry his smile into tomorrow."


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