Gravestones: A Series of Prose Poems
The Flags of Veterans
By Megan Baxter

In the cold wind of December, the weak light of winter, the flags snap and tear. Bleached, the white stripes are translucent, like skin. Through them, more stones, the white fence, the slick road. In the spring, the Boy Scouts scatter in the graveyard, collecting the old flags that cling like memories to their. All together, they solemnly burn the bundles of stars and colors, one at a time, the flames leaping up over the fabric, the hungry, wooden stake. I’ve never seen what they do with the ashes. The young faces watch with grave interest as the flags go up in flames. You can tell their favorite part of the day is the run, the scattering amongst the stones. It is like a hunt for eggs, this search for the old flags. In December I dream of the sleeping men who met here, before the square-white church two hundred years ago. The arms of farmers, the hands of sheep men, deer hunters, dairy boys. And a bugle to keep order, as the men shuffled, shifting like neighbors at a church supper. It all seems very distant, revolution, civil war. But the men gathered, anxious for the march south, on Muster Square and I imagine it is June, and brilliant, and the church stands like a white cliff and the graveyard like broken teeth, like an open mouth, rasping, and to the north, the hills green with the new leaves, and the hay field has been cut for the first time and smells fresh and young. Oh beautiful bodies, the muscle of a life of work, the hard hands and thick forearms. Bullet through body, musket ball through muscle mass, the march through cold and heat. The little Boy Scouts fidget in their uniforms. There are many flags to burn. The ceremony drags on into the rain.