Some Soldiers Are Heroes (Inspired by Jack Gilbert's "The Abnormal Is Not Courage"

Amy K. Genova

The boys roll out to Iraq. Most anxious, ready to get it over.
They wear their dress uniforms and white gloves to church,
inspire awe, admiration, and say goodbye. Little girls in pink
Sunday dresses and patent leather shoes, cross their hearts
and promise to grow-up by the time they come home. Old
women with the same helmets of hair commit to memory
grandsons' faces with their worn fingers. Veterans of all the
antecedent wars sit in pews, uniformly silent, wearing
the same invisible hats. The boys’ beauty stuns, like
March roses with imprudent blossoms. Blooms to pour
from planes in Baghdad’s bunkered streets. Red against
black. Say they are not heroes. Say they are falling stars.
Soldiers weep. Soldiers laugh. Some are heroes, some are
cowards, and others simply die under the white sky. Heroism
is not enlisting or the number of kills from Audie Murphy’s
gun. Heroism in not a Hiroshima bomb, that swaps a million
deaths for a million lives. Heroism resides in individuals, but
rarely nations. Heroism is the genius of saving lives, without
spilling blood. Heroism lies between the skinny ribs of doctors,
diplomats, teachers, mothers, and wise young girls who know
death, yet fast for others. Sip watery tea, instead of gorging on
the ends of soldier boys.