Juno Beach, site of the Canadian D-day Invasion

Two giggling girls race along the beach

They run and leap among the sand dunes

Wade through the tide pools

Collect scallop shells

And muse about the chains and seaweed covered buoys washed up on the strand

And this is where

Almost seventy years ago

Forty-five thousand men

And boys

Under the cover of Allied airplanes

Landed, waded through the surf,

Dodged German machine guns

Or didn’t

The museum, surrounded by
Canadian and French flags

Old concrete bunkers

Memorial steles

And sculpture

Explains the story

A dictator appeased too long

A far away nation willing to do its duty

And young men and boys

Who signed up for adventure and honour

And longed to be home for Christmas

But never were

And I think the soldiers

The fallen and the vets

Would smile upon my girls playing in the waves

And upon the beach

They did their job, fulfilled their role

So that generations later

Two giggling girls

Could race upon the beach.