Sad Marine

To hope and pray for peaceful days,

Those that in them a fire grew,

Burning out a sacred force,

To be with them, the proud, the few.

So marine where have you been?

Some awful place where combat slept,

And waited for your heart to come,

Then tore it out of your thick chest,

Then hung it heavy over you

To follow you for all your days,

To soak the thoughts that you have left,

To stay with you at every age.

Sad marine, sad marine,

No one knows what you have seen,

Pick up your heart and crying soul,

Place them where a few may know.

Where have all your friends gone to?

Were you the last thing that they saw?

Are they sleeping at Arlington,

Or are they resting on a wall?

Do they visit you in dreams,

Or are they just inside your brain,

Or do they haunt you as a ghost,

Or better yet, they live the same?

Is there some old monument,

A graveyard stone that tells it all?

What is left for the living who

Had to watch their brothers’ fall?

Sad marine, sad marine,

No one knows what you have seen,

Pick up your heart and crying soul,

Place them where a few may know.

And know you did not leave them

Out there in jungle air.

And know you did not leave them

At that spot on mountain top.

And know you did not leave them

Under sky in dusty dry.

And know you did not leave them

To be a ghost on battered coast.

Reflecting some on all one’s done

Under some mortal vibrant sky,

What freedom costs and then to know

Those who have fallen never die.

Their souls shine out from heaven’s place,

Some peace all seek to feel.

They have found it early on

And left you with pain that’s real.

Only left the true marine to

Love and live and dream so deep.

Loneliness stays with the heart,

Those memories that you must keep.

Sad marine, sad marine,

No one knows what you have seen,

Pick up your heart and crying soul,

Place them where a few may know.

The light and love you have for us,

In everything you do and see,

That bond of sacred freedom trust,

The life you give you true marine

Makes us believe in hope that’s left,

To patch up that heavy heart you have,

To promise you we won’t forget,

You make us proud, you make us glad.

Carrying all that heavy load,

Kneeling down to honor friends,

Even as the time will go,

What you know will never end.

Sad marine, sad marine,

No one knows what you have seen,

Pick up your heart and crying soul,

Place them where a few may know.

Kyle McHale 2010