for the Major, my father, an airman, not a sailor


Again, what is remembered.

The chase is on. 

Sailors this time. 
Cotton candy sweet 
in their dress whites, 
they seek out
stains desperate
for a night in arms. 

Dawn's a blur, a slippery 
salute, shirt tails half mast, 
nothing virgin gone as 
yet, the war is distant,
a rumor only, a mere twitch
barely guessed in dense
traffic

beyond
the Narrows where
swallows signify and
murmur over head,
cheap shots to be had 
in a rusty bar crouching 
low beneath the

Verrazano.
 

Beneath that bridge beside
the narrows gypsies1 park
and wait, their drivers names
hard to say but they belong
here in the one city where
all citizens are named Everyone
from Elsewhere where being
drunk is only weather, and the
port, old, grand, will pass for
any other but for codes of odd graffiti: 

*

I've no idea what the 
inside of my father's bomber
looks like, how it smells
when filled with fear, laden, 
perhaps passed off as gun 
powder, fuel, flak flame 
and smoke so deep in the 
pores it stinks a lifetime, 
yours. Also mine by blood.

Still,  your son is proud
though fear is the meal
you often fed dutifully
eaten with sliced bread
so white white, light in
the shaking hand, dread
the tarnished knife and
fork, simple instruments 
to quell terror in you
served up to sons, at
least one of them.

I know that now, and this: 

Dessert is a son's pardon. 

You nod, wink, 
all's understood, 
unsaid but conveyed, 
not too late the 
father-hope.

If you have one more bomb to
let go let's do it together. God 
has chosen me and it wants 
revenge, REVENGE the name
on a sudden wall, a painted scene, 
swamp in black light bizarre, 
iridescent Spanish moss dense, 
tangled, sways, hints an invisible 
wind, there you are, an old 
portrait, in uniform, good looks, 
sad, even gentle eyes, a smile
noncommittal, the war is on.

Suddenly I lose stomach for it all.  

I forgive everything.

You are young, a bomber pilot 
dropping heavy kisses backed 
up in the bomb-bay.

There's a wall somewhere 
central in every capitol 
of the world with your name on it. 

Promise, I'll drop your name, not 
bombs, every son's chance I get. 


See all these sailors here 
in packs? I'd kiss them all, 
say to them, 

Love your old man, 

what he's seen is in his eyes, 
finally dare to look hard there, 
the face is yours, 
no talking allowed, 
no guessing either, 

watch his hands, 
what they do.  

Never say 

it's over. 

Love, I mean.


That Sunday bar under the 
bridge ushers ships in and
out the harbor counting 
the bodies of birds fallen 
from girders, watching them 
fall's a kind of sport, a free
shot per bird, bad whiskey,
bottom shelf, both winners
and losers choose from what's
offered or what's left, nothing 
for the birds. One takes what's
given.

Still, I am for some things: 

Be kind to taxis. They serve.
Brief is the port (any one)  
that allows purity to pass
almost unnoticed in every 
young face, shirt tails out, 

and stiff, 

no wind to blow them. 

 1 Gypsie cabs (not the official Yellow Cabs of New York City).