The road named for a village in France,

Where a soldier boy crept from hedges

To battle the Kraut, with fear mixed bravery.

His black bordered-death letter told his kin.

Colville, his renamed road became, a memorial far

From the shriek of tank and gun. Tribute to a blood

Soaked field that drained each tender dream from

An ashen boy close beside a village thus named.

Across foam flecked expanse of sea, with span

His mother could not fathom, there stood his place,

A dusty mile of thirty houses, a store, quarry pond  

From slave cabin and fields to covered bridge,

Once he hid in bridge’s shadow to kiss a girl, begged

Cider drink at the cabin and daily walked to school. .

Fitting it should now carry the name from where death

Snatched his last full breaths and rang the angelus bell.

Follow with me as my shaky pen scratches tales

Found down Colville road, of stories he did not live

to know along a path named because this boy died

Alone under boom of guns a world away in France.