Sidewalks on Rock Street

It's not so much the sidewalk,
erupting as it is,
jagged plates of concrete
rocking under foot,
not the initials of lovers,
neither never old,
not the stamp of construction
(WORK GUARANTEED: 1908),
not even the oak's demesne,
roots reaching under mansions
while the limbs there blithely shade

(Time lapsed:
sidewalks coming up in waves that
break on generations), but

the results of our planting,
the beauty we create,
the destruction we perpetuate,
all so consequent in time
that we cannot imagine.


(Arkansas Magazine, Arkansas Democrat, January 19, 1986)

Kissing Cousins

Kisses end, and bubbles...pop.
Eyes avert, or they drop,
but kiss again, you know they will
(the loss there warrants more),
sensation blending all
toward what lies left in store,
tasting touch and smell, too true,
and visions, O!  See the floating orb,
glistening, gleaming there between them
(so seeming kith, yet kin),
a planet's worth of expectations?
Alas, adrift.  It cannot be:
They are first blood relations...pop.


(12/18/2013) 

Out of Context 21

Well, it was bad.  Maybe there wasn’t the horrific brutality The Veteran experienced in Japan, but it was bad.  I learned that, not from conversation with Rangers, but by reading books such as Twice to Freedom, The Last Escape, and Soldiers of Misfortune, the latter a book Clarence Goad recommended that argues many American POWs ended up in Soviet hands and were never repatriated, never heard from again.  Clarence would know.  He was an escaped POW who ended up in the Soviet sector near war’s end and had a devil of a time getting a US Naval ship to take him on board.  At first, they advised him that, since he was in the Soviet sector, he was required to turn himself over to the Soviets, not the Americans.  Clarence knew better and would have none of that.

            Micky Romine had an equally difficult time getting back on the American side.  The Soviets liberated his camp near the Elbe River, and that side of the river belonged to the Soviets; the Americans controlled the other side.  According to Micky, the U.S. and Soviets had a POW exchange program in the works, but the Soviet POWs had no desire to return to the Soviet side because they believed, since they had surrendered, they would face either a firing squad or a trip to Siberia.  The U.S. Army wouldn’t force them to go; therefore, the Soviets refused to return some 5,000 American POWs.  Many believe those POWs ended up in Soviet gulags, never to return.  Twenty-two G.I.s got lucky, though, and Micky was one of them. Disguised as a U.S. Army patrol that numbered exactly twenty-two soldiers and frequently crossed the Elbe River bridge, Micky and the others nonchalantly marched across the bridge and into the American zone, into freedom.

From "Prisoner of War: It wasn't too bad"--2008

Out of Context 19

Some things my brothers and I learned through demonstration and repetition.  If we slammed the door, we might have to go back out and demonstrate the proper way to open and close a door.  Depending on the severity of the slam, we might have to demonstrate it quite a few times.  Whatever the task, we were instructed that, “Quality comes first; then we’ll worry about quantity.”  However, in not many words, he taught me that quality was relative, or came in different forms.  We were rebuilding a wood and fabric aircraft, had the wings off and the entire airplane stripped down to a skeleton.  My job was to clean, sand and varnish the fuselage.  Well, I was putting on the first coat of spar varnish, and I thought I was doing a great job, being very meticulous: no runs, sags or brush marks.  I glimpsed dad watching me, and I thought, “Ah-ha! He is no doubt admiring my work and thinking how meticulous and conscientious I am.”  While that may have been what he was thinking, what he said was, “Who do you think you are, Rembrandt?  Put some varnish on there.”  It didn't take much thinking to appreciate the wisdom.


From "Ranger Fathers"--2006