I met a man with a Y for a hand.
Addressed him timidly, "which war?"
An earnest reply: "the second."
He then went on.
His words were water, gently flooding my mind.
'O pliant paper sea, kindly permit those words to flow from me and into Thee!' For I fear I may drown, held under too long by the rapids I have become.
This is my stranger, the moments he shared:
'Father gone, too young to forgive.
The neighbor boy's '41 Buick leaves dust on his new bicycle.
Upon a cinder track, Father's fleeing footsteps spur him on,
For his is a sadness only speed can overcome.
I know not by what good grace he 'scaped savage Okinawa, with her Endless line of bayonets, but I do know this:
That cinder track, in devotion absolute, forgot its form, stretching from an Imperfect oval to a path at once straight and serpentine, leading you from foxhole to foxhole, past ambush and anguish.
No victory lap here; just heavy iron tread snapping shoots of bamboo spread for a finish line.
Silence and silence alone greets him as he collapses post-race, leaving three fingers to Okinawa and departing post-haste.'
I had all but succumbed to his tale, each new sentence a towering breaker Pummeling me into the darkness of my aquatic consciousness.
I reached out, finding a precious grasp extracting me from jealous eddies and Lonely currents.
Though our handshake held seven where ten should rightly go, it was yet more complete than any I have known.
Jun 14, 2014
Jun 14, 2014 at 8:31 PM UTC
I met a man with a Y for a hand.
Addressed him timidly, "which war?"
An earnest reply: "the second."
He then went on.
His words were water, gently flooding my mind.
'O pliant paper sea, kindly permit those words to flow from me and into Thee!' For I fear I may drown, held under too long by the rapids I have become.
This is my stranger, the moments he shared:
'Father gone, too young to forgive.
The neighbor boy's '41 Buick leaves dust on his new bicycle.
Upon a cinder track, Father's fleeing footsteps spur him on,
For his is a sadness only speed can overcome.
I know not by what good grace he 'scaped savage Okinawa, with her Endless line of bayonets, but I do know this:
That cinder track, in devotion absolute, forgot its form, stretching from an Imperfect oval to a path at once straight and serpentine, leading you from foxhole to foxhole, past ambush and anguish.
No victory lap here; just heavy iron tread snapping shoots of bamboo spread for a finish line.
Silence and silence alone greets him as he collapses post-race, leaving three fingers to Okinawa and departing post-haste.'
I had all but succumbed to his tale, each new sentence a towering breaker Pummeling me into the darkness of my aquatic consciousness.
I reached out, finding a precious grasp extracting me from jealous eddies and Lonely currents.
Though our handshake held seven where ten should rightly go, it was yet more complete than any I have known.
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