I watched the flag pass by one day, it fluttered in the breeze;
A young Marine saluted it, and then he stood at ease.

I looked at him in uniform, so young, so tall, so proud;
With hair cut square and eyes alert, He’d stand out in any crowd.

I thought . . . how many men like him, had fallen through the years?
How many died on foreign soil? How many mothers’ tears?

How many pilots’ planes shot down; How many died at sea?
How many foxholes were soldiers’ graves?
No, Freedom is not Free.

I heard the sound of Taps one night, when everything was still;
I listened to the bugler play, and felt a sudden chill;

I wondered just how many times that Taps had meant “Amen”
When a flag had draped a coffin of a brother or a friend;

I thought of all the children, Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands. With interrupted lives.

I thought about a graveyard At the bottom of the sea,
Of unmarked graves in Arlington.
No. Freedom is not Free!

By Kelly Strong