The Veteran

His life began in 1909,

mine, fifty two years later.

I would visit at summertime

to breathe in Alabama stars.

At night, he sat in his deep

seated tapestry covered chair

with full round arm rests,

and watched T.V., his black

glasses perched on his head

like road signs along a highway.

There was a sacred separateness

between us, he never chatted,

or gossiped, just the necessities,

“Who wants watermelon?”

It was 8:30 and between shows.

He cut a 1″ thick disc of ripe fruit,

sprinkling it with salt. Sometimes,

we ate in the kitchen or brought

our plates to the living room on trays.

But what of those shared moments

and my need to replicate that melon

dusted with salt? It’s never worked.

The fruit is too hard or soft, the salt

too salty, the seeds, flimsy and thin,

not at all like the sturdy ebony ovals,

blanketed in bright pink flesh,

that I could spit three yards or sweet

white ones I would swallow.

The past has one time, one plate upon

which it was served if forks taste

different then so did the meals.

I look at his picture when he was forty

but I can see the same way his muscles

worked his smile and how his skin folded

over the corner rims of the lower lids

as they did when he was sixty. Places

that touch all time, showing then now.

So why do they often occur as gifts?

When I’m walking past a restaurant

and the scent of bacon instantly takes me

twenty years back into their kitchen

or the way a sip of coke in a glass, cloaked

with condensation puts me on their porch.

Now, across my desk, lay bundles of letters

tied with red frayed ribbons that have lost

their luster to the sun, an escarpment

of dried bones, waiting for sinews,

muscles, organs, flesh and breath to fill

their lungs. As each bow is untied,

letters unfold his self-censored news,

newspaper clippings of Patton’s campaign

and photographs of carnage in black,

white and gray. But what of the true

shade of these ribbons and those days

in which the letters were received?

A letter dated Sunday October 29, 1944 states that he went over to a neighboring town for a reception with some of the local people. According to a document entitled “The Historical Data and Background of the 345th Regiment”, during this time, the soldiers were given tours of London and industrial sites in the immediate locality. Mow Cop Castle is a very famous attraction near Biddulph so I chose it because there was a good chance that he saw it.

Mow Cop Castle, England

We walked to the crest of Mow Cop today,

the moors rolled below the hedges, bucking

up against naked rocks that jutted up from earth,

coughing up bits of carboniferous shale.

It was an angry terrain wedged under heavy

skies by a horizon, pouting and tear stained.

Our guide, a local woman, wore a trench coat,

full and cinched at the waist by her buxom figure

while yours, small and tapered, has an olive collar,

embroidered with your initials and mine, married

letters clasping together that over lap the way

you throw your leg over my thigh when asleep.

I could see you there, too. The damp eating

away the crispness of your clothes, pressed

pleats flat upon your hips, wrinkles etched

into your blouse like week old bed sheets

and your brow facing it all with pearls

draping your throat as the 32 foot tower

adorned with chips of limestone at its feet.

It was quiet, no raids today just the wind,

running its course like waves over the heath,

until I stood under the stone archway in silence.

It’s how we sleep in our own peace at night,

after briefly listening to each other’s breathing,

talking about the day, rolling to favorite sides,

sounder than three foot walls of stone but tied

to the same place like those ridges and vista.

At that point, the woman turned to say, “Biddulph

can’t escape its geography or geology, coal, iron,

stone and sand, or even its name, “by the diggings.”

My grandfather was called “old man” because of his prematurely gray hair. On the other hand, in many of his letters, he used the nickname “the old man” to refer to Colonel Sugg. From a letter dated, November 27, 1944, he says “From the appearance of the part of France I have seen the people over here certainly took a pounding on and after “D” day I am certainly glad that I wasn’t in on it. Huge piles of rock and brick, all that remains of large buildings – but the people seem to be happy now”. Letter dated December 9, 1944, “a lot of destruction, but I haven’t seen anything that is as complete as La Havre.”

Le Havre

A last drag lingered in the metal rim

of his helmet, dissipating into graying hair.

The salty wind lashed across the beach,

through his uniform, under his scalp.

He twisted the cigarette in the sand

and looked west towards lower Normandy.

D-Day was over five months ago.

The war was going well. Paris was liberated.

The 87th infantry was on to Belgium and Germany.

No, he was not there on June 6th. No one

with any sense would have this old man

jump from a plane. The kids did that.

One of his men tossed a brick that landed

with a plunk and satisfactory belch in the water

but nobody laughed. Instead, it called them back.

Drawn to attention they felt vaguely unfamiliar

and shy. He gazed upon his black boots,

sand cleaved, like fraying ropes across

his feet to restrain him from kicking

the rubble that peppered a battered Le Havre.