Through eighty-eight years of rain and snow,
Of days and nights, one solider
Marches by a single tomb:
Twenty-one step salute, repeat.

He does not know whose grave he guards,
And yet his wakeful watch he keeps
To honor the soldiers we lost:
Twenty-one step salute, repeat.

This guard recalls to us war’s cost—
His steps carving greater acclaim
Than any monument of stone:
Twenty-one step salute, repeat.

He keeps company with those who
Truly gave their all: memory,
Life, and even name now unknown.
Twenty-one step salute, repeat.

What deeds of honor they may have
Done, what family waited for
Messages that have never come:
Twenty-one step salute, repeat.

One laurel only can we lay
Like this upon their nameless grave—
One silent unbroken salute:
Twenty-one step salute, repeat.

---

Visiting Arlington National Cemetery and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is hard to describe. It’s solemn and somber. Standing at the top of the steps that face the tomb, I felt the same heaviness that falls over a funeral service as everyone waits to walk past the casket at the end, except here there were no tears. Just silence and the weighty sense of everyone contemplating the same subject I was.

At the changing of the guard, the relief commander called us to stand and be silent. He didn’t have to, though, because the gathered crowd had been hushed since I arrived, well before the hour mark, and the only people not standing were the military veterans in wheelchairs, gathered in a group on the right.

No one spoke. The loudest sound was the clicking of the guard’s heels as he turned at the end of each 21-step march.

After the guard changed, we watched for a little longer and then gradually, and silently, dispersed.

As we left, no one spoke. The loudest sound was the clicking of the guard’s heels as he turned at the end of each 21-step march.