skipping pebbles together
(written on Wednesday, January 23, 2008, right after daybreak)
(dedicated to the heroic citizen-soldier of 1944-45 who still is my Dad)
I watched him
frailly skip flat pebbles
two times or three
before they fell below
a slow, quiet flow of the river.
He told me
Granddad had taught him
what stones skipped best
and how to whip the arm just so
when they’d gone fishing
for catfish when
he was a boy.
He told me
when he’d dug
foxholes in shaking hillsides
in Italy during the war,
the pebbles he’d found
in stream beds below
would click in his pocket.
That he always kept a half pocketful
to skip in solitary moments
when away from the agitation
of the killing of boys his age
and a slow smooth stream
could be found
to remind him of home.
His war’s gone and so is mine.
We’ve not forgotten though
a peace that joins us
in skipping pebbles
quietly by ourselves.
(dedicated to the heroic citizen-soldier of 1944-45 who still is my Dad)
I watched him
frailly skip flat pebbles
two times or three
before they fell below
a slow, quiet flow of the river.
He told me
Granddad had taught him
what stones skipped best
and how to whip the arm just so
when they’d gone fishing
for catfish when
he was a boy.
He told me
when he’d dug
foxholes in shaking hillsides
in Italy during the war,
the pebbles he’d found
in stream beds below
would click in his pocket.
That he always kept a half pocketful
to skip in solitary moments
when away from the agitation
of the killing of boys his age
and a slow smooth stream
could be found
to remind him of home.
His war’s gone and so is mine.
We’ve not forgotten though
a peace that joins us
in skipping pebbles
quietly by ourselves.
Tags: citizen-soldier, dad, foreign_war, greatest_generation, hero, home, poem
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