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The Navy Man |
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My father was a Navy man.
He first went to Vietnam, to the Persian then the Sulu Sea.
My mother and I would watch the waves and wonder
If the flotsam was a ship recast as driftwood
With a Navy man inside.
My mother and I never tramped the beach unless the sky
Stayed cloudy or the sea all blotted out.
Or to escape the pain, she only padded the sand in the rain.
My father was a Navy man.
He loved the world beyond our world, the people beyond our home.
But on my mother's face, as lonely as our world in space
I could read her silent cry that if my father died at sea
We must not look at the ocean again.
My mother and I never tramped the beach unless the sky
Stayed cloudy or the sea all blotted out.
Or to escape the pain, she only padded the sand in the rain.
Tears are often jewel-like. My mother's went unnoticed by
My father for his jewel was the sea. And in my father's eyes
I knew he found in the sanctity of distance
Something brighter than her jewels.
One day they told us the ocean raged and took him deep inside.
My mother and I never tramped the beach unless the sky
Stayed cloudy or the sea all blotted out.
Or to escape the pain, she only padded the sand in the rain. |
By
Stephen Brown
Copyright 1998
Listed June 9, 2009 |
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