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Life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness

A Flag Men Die For

by RodG

One Line from the Declaration Contest Winner 

To celebrate July the Fourth we went downtown to watch and cheer the marchers in the big parade. The War was over but a year. My crippled dad was home at last. He'd lost a leg at Normandy, but he stood proudly with his crutch and shouldered me so I could see. Our town's trustees in open cars passed first and waved at everyone. Fire trucks with blaring horns came with brown-coated men all having fun. We heard the high school band before a tall drum major first appeared. He held aloft our country's flag and those around us wildly cheered. My father whispered in my ear, "Salute!" as flag and boy passed by. We raised cupped fingers to our brows, and then I saw him start to cry. I stared awhile before he spoke. "The Stars and Stripes I love a lot. Democracy must be preserved, and that, my son, is why I fought." The band marched on and still he wept as that grand banner proudly waved. And decades later I still see those tears, salute the flag he saved.

Writing Prompt Happy Fourth of July! This contest invites you to draw inspiration from one of the lines below from the Declaration of Independence. Use that line as the seed for your poem. "We hold these truths to be self-evident" "All men are created equal" "Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness" "He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good" "Governments are instituted among men deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" "A long train of abuses and usurpations" "It is their right it is their duty to throw off such government" "For imposing taxes on us without our consent" "To secure these rights governments are instituted among men" "Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions" "With a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence we mutually pledge to each other our Lives our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" "The separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them" Please include the chosen line in your author's notes when you submit your poem. Have fun!

One Line from the Declaration Contest Winner

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