My Grandmother called it Decoration Day

Kamál (Perfection), 9 ‘Azamat (Grandeur), 166 BE – Monday, May 25, 2009 about 7:21 AM Pacific Time

My grandmother called it Decoration Day.
It was a day of driving
from cemetery to cemetery
and placing homemade crape paper flowers
on the graves of veterans
who had passed into the next world.

Grandma knew the name of each veteran
and who he married;
Grandpa knew the routs to each cemetery
and the names of the nearby towns.

Preparation for Decoration Day
began on the first of May
when Grandma bought colored crape paper
and pipe cleaners;
then we made crape paper flowers
with pipe cleaner stems.

On Decoration Day;
on Memorial Day
we drove to the cemeteries
and placed the flowers on the graves;
we took a picnic lunch,
which we consumed outside
the graveyard of a town
in Oklahoma or Kansas.