ManicDDaily

Veteran’s Day, 2009

My father has always worn
black, army-issue, shoes,
whose toes turn up within
a few days of purchase,
something from the war,
too much forced march.

Today makes me think
of loads of turned-up toes,
curling beneath green fields,
or stock stiff still
in a sprawl of mud and camo.

My nephew talks of joining
up, practices for the test.
I don’t know what to say–
sure, if you don’t get hurt,
and no one around you either,
not even those at whom you aim
your gun.

I don’t say that.
I know people do it, maybe have to,
even my gentle father, balding
at seventeen, who marched once
twenty miles before breakfast,
shaving out of a cup at 6, and then, at Pilsen,
was issued a beer with a raw egg in it;
the man next to him, either
shaving or drinking beer, got hit, right
next to him.  And the egg, he said,
they just drank down.

All rights reserved, Karin Gustafson, 2009.

For more poems, especially villanelles about soldiers, check out posts in poetry or villanelle categories from ManicDDaily home page.

This entry was posted on November 11, 2009 at 10:03 pm and is filed under poetry. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: black shoes, Karin Gustafson, manicddaily, poetry, toes, Veteran's Day, Veteran's poem, war poem