Kestrels by the Thousands

By Daniel Herbold

      ~for Ken and the boys of the 82nd Airborne


your boots are the first to offer
a freefall salute to the hurricane.

leaping into the straferiddled cauldron demands desperate faith
but slogging halfway across Europe carves the man.

surely it was no debt, no original sin
that strapped you into the harness, slid the M1 into your hands

sturdy souls defy the fate of the rusty plow, the rain-beaten phonebooth;
you dreamt, like all little boys, of flying

but this barnstorming, this madness confronting a profound madness, 
exacts the bloody toll 
of eyeless slumped bodies and bubbled gasps for mama.

now the hooded plovers nesting on Omaha’s crenellated dunes 
vacantly watch the whitecaps in the Channel as they tumble over, 

the dark water churning, an elemental gyroscope, history’s taciturn witness,
the white gone in a blink.


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Daniel Herbold is an English teacher living in Western New York. His father, George Herbold, was an Army engineer in WWII, and his uncle, Kenneth Janish, was a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne. They were both at D-Day. Daniel is a lifelong amateur poet and writer who is inexorably drawn to history. As a family member of veterans and an educator, Mr. Herbold fervently believes we must keep our eye on the lessons of the past.


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