120. Civil War Drummer Boy

Your dead gaze at me
     with silv’ry-white eyes
     staring into a midday sky;
          looking at nothing.
What lies behind your lifeless face?
     tattered uniform faded;
     shoes on another man’s feet.
          What was your name?
A number, a statistic
     in some man’s book
     is all that we see,
          but what about you?
The stories such eyes could tell
     if only they still breathed.
     With each man, a tale,
          with each tale, a lifetime.
Where the rivers run red
     and the skies creep to black
     many a boy has been lost;
          lifetimes that will never be.