.................................
The Lieutenant Commander, Retired
.................................

Our pictures, ten, fifteen years old
show John in dress whites, shoulders broad
against the flag, the patriotic backdrop,
grinning, looking like an icon
or an ad for something bright.
A decade farther up the mantelpiece
in black and white, his mother pins the eagle on his sash
while the governor looks on.
And somewhere in a scrapbook is a snapshot of the wedding
where a flaired-leg, flushed, tuxedoed groom
ducked and covered, shielding his veiled bride
from a cloudburst of rice.
His face is rounder now, hair more gray;
his jaws are blue with stubble.
His jacket will not button past his sternum's southern tip.
He works in retail, supervising boys
in crisp red bow-ties.
His wife is strange from years of marking time with him at sea,
mad about a thousand little not-to-mention things:
the moments missed, the loneliness,
the Persian Gulf--how glad he seemed to see his orders come!
domestic tasks, the PTA, the discipline she had to do without him.
And since she has no medals, she has a temper.
She gives the orders, she dresses him down,
she reminds him that these sons she bore,
legitimate but somehow
by virtue of her sacrifice, much more hers than his,
have her to thank for their high marks,
their manners, and their soldier-stoic ways.
John, who flew an F-14,
cannot fight back.
He doles out dollars, deals with bills and maintenance,
keeps the Buicks running, cleans the gutters, takes out trash
and plods from end to end
of this house that service pay built,
and cannot find a berth.

.................................
Jennifer Merri Parker
.................................

 
Copyright © Jennifer Merri Parker
January 1999

...a poem in this room by Marek Lugowski...
the story of eleven naval men
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