another for the Major 1

Of Childhood Lamenting - Song of Experience


Might I sing it then? 

How many stones he hauled

Not bidden but rough forced

Hand by hand from coagulate soil, 

A boy's red wagon rusting

Full of spilled tumble-stones,

Unyielding stars between silent rows.


Brooding father, with

His hoe to weed, or

Ridge to row, or brow

To strike, made of a boy

a mule and plow at

Earth's farthest Edge

Too ill-tilled to nurture

But more to fracture.


The land and boy

Turned by his father's

Bad blood to waste.

Both boy and corn,

Obedient to his and

Greater Hand, grew tall.

He hid there, late summers

In fateful stalks, grew

Small on shadowed

Afternoons reading of

Exiled royal Odysseus

And scores more, native

Born and slave, driven

From homing soil beyond

Surf, beyond tall mountains

And fragrances desert-walled.


He waited, a stone for

A small boy's hand, 

Or a God's, to haul him

Or throw, 

But it was his father's.


I often stare now at my own to know the difference.

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1 My father was a Major in the United States Air Force.  He was a bomber pilot during WW2 flying over 30 missions over Germany.