Title: George and The War
by Catt Kingsgrave
Rating: Gen
Wordcount: 1700
Genre: Memorial poem... with dodgy scansion.
Author's notes: This is a votive offering for my Grandfather, who died earlier this year, and to whose funeral I could not make it. I wrote this on Halloween, before making an Obon lantern boat for him -- a tradition I've adopted as part of my Samhain rite in any year that someone I know has passed on. The sight was lovely, and I wish I'd a way of capturing that line of glowing jewels as they floated easily down the river toward the sea... but it was late, and we were all tired, and we just didn't think of it then. So I'm sharing this poem I wrote for/about him now, in honor of Veteran's Day, 2011. No apologies.
Feedback: This is pretty personal stuff here, so concrit might not go over well. Headpats would be welcome though.
Linking/reposting: Sure. Just ask first, and send me a link, so I can track where it goes please.
Tips: Not for this one.
George and The WarWhat follows is a story of a man I never knew,
But who somehow laid the pattern for what I would know as true
And strong and right, and to be wished for
And of what was worth the fight,
And whose spirit I sent sailing down the river Samhain night
With a candle lit to guide him, and a sail of ocean blue
And a story built of pieces I have gleaned from those who knew.
George was a good boy, and he was a good man
Branched up out of humble and hardworking clans.
He was a deft tinker, a good man with tools,
With a mind running higher than everyday rules.
But he wasn't a rebel. He tried to be good,
Clever, strong, and upstanding, to show where he stood
In a world that was hurtful, and reckless, and cold,
Where a soul could be bought, and a life could be sold,
And but could he cleave tight to the things he knew right,
Then he might just hold fast, and stand tall.
Then the Harbor went up into flames,
And the shadow of Japanese planes
Scared the somnolent giant right up to its feet,
Sent a million Joes marching in ten thousand streets
To note their names down upon crisp paper sheets
They would offer in trade for their guns.
(And the God of his Fathers had told him not to kill.
That death is bought cheaply, and comes where it will,
But that life is a chalice which can't be refilled
Once it has been broken or spilled.)
George rose to his duty: no coward, no shirk,
Put brain, back, and belly full into the work.
He kept up the engines, the cars and the trucks,
Generators and loaders, and diggers, and luck
Brought his wheels to the beachhead -- the first in four days
With a tractor intact to dig all the men's graves
Who, in those three days prior, had charged through the tide,
Got their first tour of France in the moment they died,
Then bore blind, bloody witness wherever they fell,
To the living, who fought for that eight miles of Hell
Till the first landed backhoe that made it up whole
Scraped them out of the way and into a deep hole.
And George hoped, as the sand brushed their bodies from sight,
That they were resting better than he would that night.
(And the God of his Fathers had said how it would be.
That the righteous would survive, while the sinners could not flee,
But through dust, blood and gunsmoke, it grew hard for him to see
How the dead were less righteous than he.)
George's coil went un-shuffled, his bucket un-kicked.
He did his job well even when he felt sick
At the hell all around him in War's grisly tread.
At the nightmares that ranged very far from one's bed
To march over the hillsides in boots of both kinds,
Wreaking bloody amusements on any they'd find.
Still, the process, the pattern, the motors, the gears
Gave a part of him anchorage -- a wheel that could steer
By the schedules. Supply times, upkeep of the fleet
Kept him sane, or sane-seeming, and up on his feet.
And yes, there were times when he fought not to run,
And times when he held fast and fired his gun.
And yes, there were lives that he shattered this way,
But I don't know those tales, for he never would say.
But I know he picked Jerry cans up off the roads
Where the tank-jocks had thrown them to lighten their load.
And he convoyed the diesel for Patton's advance
Through the hill towns of Belgium, and Brussels, and France.
That he once, in a village that should have been cleared,
In a mid-convoy truck with a dodgy third gear,
Watched the lead truck (his own when he'd started that drive,)
Explode into flame leaving no man alive.
And three days door to door, street to cellar they fought,
Till the column came 'round and the catchers were caught.
And I don't know how many of Ours or of Theirs
Met their ends in that village's parlors or stairs,
But I know at that battle, like all those before,
Young George left a piece of his soul on the floor --
A shred of the good boy whom once he had been,
Back when rules were straightforward, and fair play could win,
And when honor was more than an Officer's word
Sent in letters back home as the dead were interred;
Or a thin bit of brass that was stamped with a time
When the sense that God gave you was screaming to hide,
But you didn't, and only in retrospect learned
That really, you probably ought to have died;
Or a word that they say at the foot of your bed
When your arm is half-gone or you can't move your head,
Or disease and dementia wear through to the bone,
Meaning "Sorry we broke you young man, now go home."
(And the God of his Fathers said despair was a sin.
That faith must go the distance when all hope had been kicked in,
Cause it's done when He says so, and not one heartbeat before.
So you'd better keep your knees upon the floor.)
For George, the War up-ended while he worked the Maginot Line:
Clearing out traps and tripwires, defusing lurking mines
Left by soldiers, that soldiers whom after would come
In their footsteps, must creep, never daring to run.
T'was a foot put down wrong; a pliers that slipped;
A red wire instead of a blue that got snipped,
And under George went in a welter of dust,
Pain, and deafening silence, with the taste of rust
And of copper, and ends flooding over his tongue.
He must have thought sure that his tour was all done,
But Talent and Competence are dearly bought,
And those who shape the nations considered, and thought
How useful and handy their young George had been,
And thought that a way might perhaps yet be seen
Whereby the downed soldier might useful be still:
A bit of down time, what he needed to heal,
But then higher rank, and more brass, and more pain,
More soul shards lost in gory rain,
More deaths, more killing, more despair,
More nightmares he could hardly bear,
More gas, more gears, more bombs, more bones,
More flowing fire, more flying stone.
(And the God of his Fathers had taught him to obey.
That the primal sin of humankind is looming till this day,
And the price of disobedience runs generations long,
So when you're told, you'd best just move along.)
But George lay,
de profundis in his army medic cot,
And considered what he'd lost against what little he had bought.
Thought of facing his reflection every day that he might live,
What he'd see inside his mirror, and just what he could forgive.
Then he handed back the letter, and in respectful tones,
Said "I don't want a field promotion Sir. You've broke me. Send me home."
(And the God of his Fathers said he'd reap what he had sown.
That the plowshares, swords, and politics would always claim their own,
And there just is no escaping from the sins of one's own hands,
No matter how your ledger's balance stands.)
George did a lifetime's sowing in the fields he knew as home,
All the seeds he hoped would grow into the truths he once had known;
Honor, truth, responsibility, fair reward for working hands,
And obedience to what his Church or Country might demand.
And the harvests of his lifetime came in flowers, fruit and grain,
And in thistles and in brambles, and in blight and grief and pain,
And in love that built a family, (half would die before his time,)
And in work to build a name that would survive the winter's rime.
To do what it was he must to greet his mirror every day,
To keep the memories down, and keep the nightmares all at bay.
George was no marble hero, and his feet were flesh, not clay;
Judgmental and sarcastic when his temper had its way,
Fell to bigotry at times, rode to rescue other days,
And last spring, he laid his life aside, got up, and walked away.
For he could no more stand tall, and he could no more hold fast,
And so he chose his ending on his own terms at the last.
Now all that I have told you, I have heard from other tongues;
Not a whisper of his telling would he share when I was young,
Nor when I grew. But once I wrote to him, and tried to make it plain
That he was my only hero, and it was against his frame
That I would measure every man who ever caught my eye.
But I've no clue what he thought; he never wrote me a reply.
I don't know if it moved him, I don't know if he cared,
For he never gave me reason to think that respect was shared,
And I can't recall a moment when he said I'd made him proud
As an adult, but I suppose he wouldn't say such things aloud.
And now I'll never hear them, though there's those who hold him dear
Who'll offer that assurance, say the words I want to hear,
And will explain his way was silence, and in subtlety he proved
Just whom he thought was worthy, just whom he really loved.
And I'll nod like I believe them, but in truth I'll never know
If I was more to George than stories of a toddler long ago,
Or if the part of him that could have written answer back to me
Lay in pieces upon battlefields far off across the sea.
(And the God of his Fathers says a lot of stupid things.
And I gave up all the blame and shame and anguish that it brings
To live by a set of rules that always serve another's needs,
Leaving mine to starve and struggle, scratch a harvest through the weeds.
I will never have his blessing, but he still has my respect;
Not overly a hero, but a man I'll not forget.)
