The Hero Returns

Oh happy day when Garcia was shipped back home
from France first class, a guard assigned.

Sixty years earlier, he fled a bounty on his head.
to receive at docking a hero's welcome 21 gun salute,
brass band and much fan fare and waving of square inch flags

Before an august assembly of priests and colonels,
the hero's casket is opened and inspected in detail.

Oh happy day. No souvenirs from the cadaver have been stripped,
other than normal maggot wear and tear. Garcia was no saint, you know,
and supposedly normal fellows decay faster than those who have worn halos for caps.

Thousands of women the General bedded, including the wives
of foe and friend alike. At 47, he looked like a battered 85 .

Between war and coitus, his days were foreshortened.
Rumor, also, has it ----venereal disease had its part,
as the scourge of STD was known back then.

The casket revealed a skeleton cloaked in handsome braided jacket,
though terribly shredded, the Field Marshall jacket woven for him in Algiers.

The skeleton's britches were, likewise, tattered and holey.
The strangest thing, however, Garcia's right boot was as spit and polished
as the night of the ball he attended, when he leaped out a window to save his life.

The part of the boot defies scientific explanation. The same with Garcia's career.
He won campaigns he should have lost for sure

Rumor has it, Garcia made a pact with Satan Be that as it may,
today we celebrate the anniversary of his death in a high mass in his honor
where no one hears his hollow groan uttered from the great beyond.

"Countrymen, were it permitted, I would lead you in one more glorious charge."
Croaks a crow: "Fat chance of that!"