ANZACs

[Erthona]

The children of a nation
Boys and men
Stood side by side
Searching not war but adventure (not for war)
Wanting to see not death, but foreign lands (this negative way of saying things gets old quickly for me)
Their blood later shed on those foreign soils
Their bodies laid to rest in unfamiliar lands
Boys, untouched by horror
Quickly hardened by war
Men who rose from the trenches
To face a wall of gunfire (walls of gunfire)
Never flinching
They asked for little but gave all
Forging not stories but legends
The fire of Australia begun with a spark
The spark lit by the Anzacs
Mates to all and to each other
Proving themselves not only to Australia
But to the world
To all Anzacs
Past, present and future
Well done and good luck
Sleep now knowing your duty and sacrifice
And the fallen Anzacs
Who are not gone
Merely marching far away

so theres my poem about the ANZACs.

I think speaking in this negative way " Forging not stories but legends" weakens the poem; robs it of power. I do like the allusion to it's origins at Gallipoli. I have seen a few poems on his topic, and none have ever covered that, but treated it as mainly a soldiers of foreign war day, much like our memorial day here in the States.

Dale