‘The Melody That Lingers On’ and Other Poetry by John McPherson

The Melody That Lingers On

“Any requests?” the leader asked from the Old Time Country Band.
“Just tell us what you’d like to hear, we’ll play it if we can.”

“There is this song,” an old man said, “I’ve forgotten through the years,
but the melody won’t go away, keeps ringing in my ears.

I can’t recall when first I heard —or where I heard it from
but it lifted up my spirits and it made my heartstrings strum.

I’ve racked my brain to find the words that are lost as lost can be,
on Veterans Day, I heard it once, that haunting melody.

It brings to mind those souls that lie beneath that marble stone
at Arlington, that hallowed place, the Tomb Of The Unknowns.

Their names are lost but what they did forever marches on
like the melody I still can hear from that old forgotten song.

So listen close and tell me true if you recognize this tune
and if you do please play it now cause I’ll be leaving soon.”

So the old man hummed as best he could that melody from old
and the leader said, “We know it well, now listen and behold.”

Then he sang the words to the melody as the band played soft and low
and tears welled up in the old man’s eyes as he nodded to and fro.

No sound was heard from the assembled crowd as the music died away.
The old man’s song had said it all, there was nothing left to say.

Now life’s a song that’s bound to be too swiftly sung, it’s true
but the melody we leave behind still lingers like the dew.

A dew that lasts through morning sun beyond the final gong
that rings us to, a place we know there’s no forgotten song.

Old Man at the Wall

On a day of long shadows
in the short days of fall,
A singular old man
stood facing the Wall.

He looked frail and thin
as he stood all alone
Starring straight ahead
at that cold polished stone.

A dull sun was hanging
low in the sky.
A stiff breeze was blowing
leaves brown and dry.

Long did he stand
with his right arm upraised
And moved not a muscle
as he stood there and gazed.

Of the names written there
perhaps he knew one,
But one is the world
if a daughter or son.

His arm fell at last
then he turned with a grace
That showed that he knew
how to do about-face.

He never looked back
as he marched from the Wall
On that day of long shadows
in the short days of fall.

John McPherson presently resides in the small college town of Searcy, Arkansas, having retired from the USPS and as an income tax aide for Jackson Hewitt and AARP. His poems have appeared in The Avocet, Post Scrip, Saddlebag Dispatches, The Lyric, Medicine and Meaning (a UAMC online literary journal), and some anthologies. He has served as President of White County Creative Writers, Gin Creek Poets, and Ports’ Roundtable of Arkansas. At present, he is one of the poetry editors of Saddlebag Dispatches.