AFTER ARLINGTON

It lasts like a parade in place

with only the essentials cut

in rhyming white headstones:

last names, initials,

rank, branches of service.

The names answer up in a muster

of silence while Washington’s a-glut

with traffic, vectoring jets

and disproportion.

Maple groves,

road signs and gardens

remember Lady Bird and LBJ.

Facing the Department of Commerce,

Reagan’s billion-dollar

palace rivals in square

feet the whole damn Pentagon.

Roosevelt’s granite marker,

scaled as he asked to the length

and width of his desk, is harder

to find.

Jack Kennedy,

his widow, two children,

and his brothers share one plot.

Across the slow Potomac,

the names in black marble

of 58,000 futile deaths

consecrate less than an acre.

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