No Man Left Behind

No Man Left Behind

You told me no stories;
not because you have none,
but because you keep
them close to your heart,
where only you can know
them. Yet, I learned of
them, as you relived many;
I discovered much about
you even though you
have been left behind,
in a hell where no young
should have ever lived.
You are a man left behind,
where you would leave no
others, but spare not yourself.
In Death Valley you are like
the plant, Xanadu, which
grows in both shade and sun,
a tropical botany growing in
darkened arbors and shadowed
entryways, where no man
was left behind. Yet, your
youth has been sequestered
there amid the mountains
and villes, when you should
have come home – no man
left behind. You live in your
private garden attended to
by death, with memories that
rain but never bless, instead
they burn and with sleep come the
dreams – the souvenirs of war.
The leaves of the jungle no
longer remember your footsteps.
The last sound in the fading
wind are the footfalls of Death,
circling for its prey, the man
who remains where no man
was to be left behind.