Where are you now, Colonel John Reed?

Where are you now, Colonel John Reed?
Is your grave tended lovingly by grizzled veterans
Who stoop to leave you a wreath
Or to pluck away an errant dandelion
That, like a stubborn stray, keeps returning?

Where are you now, Colonel John Reed?
Do you frolic in some stately, spectral hall
A Valhalla for Continental soldiers
Where, each evening, you return victorious
After having once more routed the Redcoats, and shine your saber?

Where are you now, Colonel John Reed?
Do you lie near the edge of a woods
Underneath weeds, crabgrass and thorn bushes
The last testimonial to your role in American independence
Savagely-uprooted by iconoclastic vandals?

Where are you now, Colonel John Reed?
Is your name in the history books
Where your courage and leadership
Are memorialized for future generations
Who may never open those books
Or from whom the names "Saratoga" and "Valley Forge" elicit blank stares?

Where are you now, Colonel John Reed?
Did your men regard you as a paragon of patriotism?
Did they salute you and call you "sir" to your face, and "scoundrel" to your back?
Do you rejoice with the Father and bask forever in the eternal light
Or have wanton acts of wartime barbarity consigned you to eternal night?

Where are you now, Colonel John Reed?

© October 26, 2004 by Allan M. Heller