December 7, 2016, Prescott-

Seventy-five years have passed.

It was the second attack by foreign military

on U.S. soil, in our nation’s history.

A third would follow, fifty-seven years later.

By then, many had forgotten

the bloody sacrifice,

which again jarred our sense

of innocence.

This was as it had been before.

Those who remembered the White House burning,

were few and far between,

when the bodies fell

like cord-wood, at Antietam and Shiloh.

The Great War was witnessed by a few old soldiers,

who had served under Grant and Lee.

When the planes hit the Towers,

Pearl Harbor was a footnote,

in the rush to the House of Gifts.

How swiftly we deny,

and then forget.

Seventy-five years have gone by

and five still stand,

in remembrance of

that day,

when they were young

and no longer innocent.

(The five are the remaining survivors of the attack on the USS Arizona, at Pearl Harbor, in 1941.)