Newborns

Taking a chance this week. I've never given birth. I've never been a father. However, the two poems I submit for your consideration deal with the experience and feelings mothers' have towards their newborn children. To mothers reading these poems, please let me know if I'm close. If I'm not, let me know that, too.

Both poems are written from through the eyes (and hearts) of the mother.


While You Cried Life Into My World

You cling to me.
Clever eyes needing in a way
I never thought possible.
Your tiny sighs accenting my tears.
You will not remember this moment
When I bathed you in my happiness,
While you cried life into my world.
Your father touches your cheek
Shiny-eyed he kisses you.
He is silent.
You are love and he respects this.
My hands, his eyes/face all intermingled.
We are one, the three of us.
I know (as Mothers know)
I would give my life for you.
You sweeten my life as only a miracle can.
Holding you I dream of roses in a rainstorm
Touched by a ray of morning sun.

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Melodies Learned From the Same Heart

Sing your life’s song, my little one.
So close are we that
I weep for joy, for both of us.
Your song/my song sweetens the sun’s smile,
Highlights the beauty of your
Tiny, perfect hands.
Holding you is more than I could have dreamed.
(Safe...so safe...Shush now)
There.

Your breath colors the flowers in my heart
Radiant warm,
Silky soft.
Little one, how I love you.
My eyes close with yours
As we sing/sigh melodies learned
From the same heart.
When your songs are your own,
I shall listen with silent tears,
Recalling when we shared the same soul.

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Let me know your thoughts by leaving a comment at the bottom of this post. Take care.
b

Relationships: To the land and to memories

Today I want to start the subject of relationships. This first poem I wrote for my uncle who farmed all his life. This poem isn't about just him, but about how I see all farmers and their relationship to the land. So unique, so silent.. special and intense.

He Would Touch His Oceans

He would touch his oceans,
Recall the seeding of it’s life.
The graceful dignity of it’s death.
See the long, perfect rows of
Deep tasseled green carry the wind
In whispering waves,
Play with the rain,
Stretch slowly to the daylight
As if heaven bound.
It would smooth his brow for a moment
Then fade like memories of childhood.
Shadow-dreams to long for
When the rain stays at home
And the wind rapes the soil like an angry stranger.
His face shows the storms and droughts of life.
Lost friends,
Bitter sweat,
Self doubt.
Still he works the springtime pastures until harvest.
He is one with the earth,
His soul is rich with the spirit of life.
Planter of seas, can you smell the sweet summer
Rain couched in the twilight?
Hear the rustle of your life’s joy
Waiting for you like a windswept, silent lover?
Soft as moonlight it sings
For the grower of oceans.
Waits for daybreak’s first kiss,
And dreams of the care borne
In your touch.
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This next one is about my uncle specifically. It's about the occasional summer weekends spent on his farm. A little kid who gets to follow a busy farmer doing his chores in the early morning. My memories of a hero and he never knew it. I wrote this poem a few days after he died.


Shadow of a Hero

My uncle returns with a jacket
(made for a giant I pull it around me/adjust the sleeves).
Try to match his strides and end up running just a bit.
Watch him hoist mountains of corn onto his shoulder.

Sunlight tickles the morning’s toes.

Move from chore to chore.
His dog gives my face a licking.
Says I didn’t wash supper off from last night.
(first words he has spoken to me all morning, his whole face smiles).
We stop to have a cup of well water.

It will never taste as sweet as that day when I
Walked inside the shadow of a hero to milk the cows.
Grasshoppers make way for the farmer and his helper.
We check our shoes and go inside for a breakfast banquet.

I must leave the next day.
Stare out the closed car window,
Gravel tapping at the tires.
I wave goodbye
And grow old.
Replace dreams with practicality.
Watch the (bigger than life) shadows of experience
Fade with the growing day,
Until the sun overhead makes them disappear.

What I’m trying to say
Is that if I can catch the morning just right,
I can feel his silent laughter.
Recall the sweet taste of well water,
And for a moment, understand the contentment
He possessed.

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Give me your thoughts about farmers and farming... and perhaps a memory or two.
Take care and we'll talk next week.

b

Going to Combat and Coming Home

Welcome to week three of my blog.

My dissertation for my psychological doctorate was on the experience of soldiers preparing to deploy from their homes to a combat zone. I interviewed 4 former soldiers for hours and wrote the dissertation. Two requirements of the dissertation methodology was to include the details of my own predeployment experiences into the dissertation, and to synthesize the collected experiences into something creative. So I wrote a poem.

Up-Armor

The leaves of our love
Go softly brown.
Fall silently.
I will no longer water us,
I am leaving soon - may not come back.
Touch you from my (self-imposed) distance.
Shadow my love with final meanings.
Armor with silence our precious mornings.
Lie awake (away from you)
As I hold you in the dark.
In my eyes, you find goodbye.
The need to be gone and come back.
I look away. My armor stays in place.
You look away (sometimes) when I look at you.
We smile (strangely) at those moments
As intentions litter the ground around my boots.
Our children (their laughter in the kitchen)
Do not understand why I am awkward around them.
They sense I am away when I am home.
In loneliness I will not share with you (or anyone)
I push away thoughts of death.
I will be tough – no weakness here.
There is so much to do before I go.
With so many depending on me to bring them home.
I fear failing more than my own death.
Last goodbye.
May be the last time I see, feel, hear, touch
You, our kids (my world as it was).
Promise to return/Take care of my family/Kisses for everyone/Hugs all around.
Hold you forever - then let you (everything I knew) walk out the gym door.
Its metal finality shuts you away from
My last “I love you”.
I join rows of up-armored trees. Steadfast.
A forest battling winter,
While dreaming of (tender/opening) leaves.
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The second poem for your consideration was written for my wife, when I was flying home after the end of Desert Storm. Deploying and coming home from combat is all about relationships. I didn't know it as a soldier, but I know it now. If you have loved ones who are serving or who have served, know that all the training in the world cannot shield the heart as easily as an understanding touch. Thank you Janet, for allowing me to share this poem and for being there.

eloquence

when i miss you so much that
i cannot stop the tears
i think of all the ways
you make me happy.
the tickle your laughter brings to my heart
the thrill of touching you as i wake
the way you keep my soul alive
when all the world is intent on its own self-destruction.

the tears stop.
my mind fills with you alone.
words then have no place
to hang their hats.
only my passion, burning silent, white-hot
has eloquence enough to say how i feel.

when i see you next
i’ll fill my heart/your arms
with my quiet speech of love.
talk to your lips
i’ve dreamt of for so long
and swear to an uncertain future
that i will love you
forever.

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Well, next week I want to talk about relationships some more. I'm leaving the military theme for a little while and will talk about friendships, love, and loss. We have so many types of relationships and how they impact our lives. Please give me your thoughts about the topic this week and take care.

b

Military Poetry

Welcome to by blog. This is round 2 for my military poetry. Today I want to talk about how the power that military weapons and training can have on how and individual sees self and others. The two poems I want to share today are older, but I think just as relevant today. Please share your thoughts about the poems and what thoughts you have about this topic. There are a few of you that are having difficulty accessing the blog to post your thoughts. If you will let me know by email, and give me permission, I will cut and paste your ideas onto the blogsite post.

This first poem I wrote when I was a captain. I was helping a unit conduct a company level (a company is about 100 soldiers) live fire exercise at night (known as a CALFEX: Company LiveFire Exercise). This is when every soldier fires his weapon and the unit fires its larger weapon systems. We use real ammunition. It is incredibly loud. My job that night was to toss artillery simulators into a pit. Artillery simulators have the explosive power of about 1/4 stick of dynamite. It adds to the realism of the exercise. The excitement of being around that much destructive power can be thrilling, even intoxicating. It is easy to lose oneself, as I did that night.


CALFEX

Hell was beautiful last night.
Rage upon rage upon ruined ground.
Serenely watched by heaven and myself.
So like ...ruptured Christmas.
Red tracers Green clusters
White floating angels aflame.
Death rode the range
And won my admiration.
Giggling from my hilltop view
I rocked with each explosion
Rolled with man-made thunder.
Delighting in the effect,
I ignored its implications
And left my hilltop in darkness.

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This second poem is a little more difficult to share. During Desert Storm, there was a friendly fire incident in which 4 American soldiers were killed. It is known as the Hale Fratricide Incident. The Attack Helicopter Battalion (AHB) involved was a unit in the Brigade I was part of. I was on duty as a Brigade TOC (Tactical Operations Center) officer and was monitoring the mission on the radio when it happened. In short, it was pitch dark out, in the middle of a sandstorm, and the AHB Commander (LTC Hale) was in an Apache gunship with one of his attack helicopter companies. The wind was blowing so hard that the helicopter was literally turned sideways. What LTC Hale thought was to his front (Iraqi Armor) was actually to his side (American Armor in a skirmish line). He fired one TOW missile and destroyed a US Army vehicle and killed some of its occupants. There was a standing order prior to that night that no Commander was to engage enemy, and Hale violated that order. Hearing all this on the radio as it was happening was chilling and horrific, as I knew LTC Hale and it happened in one of my units. Hale, a rising star in the Division, was relieved of comamand and sent home within the week.


Absolution

On a laser light high
Screaming firebright,
The target hit was easy as pie
“Cause we own the night,
Do it to them before they do it to you,
And hey, be careful out there”.

We couldn't hear the night whisper,
“I cannot give back the dead,
Once they’re mine.”

Radios broke their trance with
Stunned uncertainty.
Squelched dread and gave voice
To numbed understanding:

“Oh God, I think I’ve hit friendlies”.

So we asked for absolution
For a sin within a sin.
Found penance too high.
Cut our losses,
Held high our hero’s head
For all to see
Before the fallen were cold to the touch.

We forgot that only gods are infallible,
That machines have no soul,

And the night belongs to no one
but itself.


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So give me your thoughts.

Next week I want to share about preparing for deployment to combat and returning home. Take care and have a good week.

b