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Boy next-door
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book 11 We did live on a long street street
in small houses each the same
fronted with lawns green and square
and sidewalks of cold hard concrete
all young families just starting out
moms and dads and children each
all brought together by circumstance
friendships to form and grow sweet
young girls and boys to run and play
some of each of every age
to form friendships of shared likes
and common bonds that might be
and he was years older than me
tall and gangly across the street
and my friend he was not
but every day I did see him
we did grow both older and tall
and with our friends we all did play
young and old had different games
and together we did not play
from childhood changed into our teens
and as we grew we both did dream
of all the things that we might do
and of all the things we might be
till the day the country did call
and the day that he went away
to a land most far away
and never again did we meet
and at home I watch the news
of the war so far away
and I did not really understand
of where he went and what he did
somehow empty I did feel
somehow had lost a part of me
a piece of youth not to be reclaimed
a empty longing left inside
in our hometown now stands a wall
and many names it does contain
and one of them is for him
and see you in it I do cry
I do not truly understand
for we were never truly friends
and together we never did play
he just lived across the street
Wow. What a poignant and
Wow. What a poignant and gut-wrenching elegy. The effect of sadness leaps off the screen from your words and really grabs the reader. That final stanza just seems to echo into the distance as the poem closes, and leaves the reader with a sense of sorrow of missed opportunity, and the needless death of a young life in a war in which we should never have gotten entangled. On the negative side, the emotional effect is somewhat blunted by the weakening of several verbs. The poem mostly speaks in the third person, but there is a confusing change to second person in the last line of the pentultimate stanza. These aspects prevent the poem from being as great as its subject, and your poignantly emotional remembrance, are. But a bit of editing could free the poem from those pitfalls.
Nevertheless, this poem is emotionally unsettling, which is exactly what it should be. I, personally, did not know, nor was ever acquainted with, anyone who died in that war. But a cousin of mine, who studied in college to be a pharmecologist, was drafted for the infantry, and when he returned he was never the same, and has, for most of my life, avoided any family contacts. I was thinking of him when I read this poem, as well; and that is one of the strengths of the poem---it compels the reader to pause, and to wonder if there was anyone in his or her life similar to the person you have described in the poem. In the subject matter of the poem, and the emotional power it harnasses, you have written a remarkable achievement, and one which I will revisit to read again---and which, I am sure, will continue to haunt me.
Starward