Poems | Photos | Journal | E-mail   my slice of american pie

so he made himself a passenger on a small brown boat
folded his pinpricked hands and asked that their prayers
may flower and bear fruit
so god save the king, he shrugged.
i'll send him a suit from the colonies and the foamed gray waves surrendered to an unfamiliar coast
this husband father whose hands knew threads and felts for fine hats
quickly died of winter
left them one more body to bury in the frozen ground

(his 14 year old cousin asked her journal in despair:
so many of us have died; and when we are all gone
who will bury the gravediggers?)

when the snow melted, still half remained above
but of the tailor, there is not left a stone
only his name, for his widow and children later made the same trip
they followed in his wake
and so forth and so on ever after
until a handgrenade almost stopped the story cold
after 200 years

it almost silenced the song in the barracks

i don't know which notes his hands pulled from the guitar
his fingers threading through the strings like needles while
he waited for their promise that he could go home
oh say can you see? no one saw
or no one cared that one more fire was burning in the jungle
the other wide ocean away

but when i was small, if i walked behind him
if i followed in his wake
i could see the rough shredded skin scarred in strips
across his legs and back and struggle to imagine
how he must have hurt
but
god bless America, my father shrugs
and he knows his own eyes still swim the color of virgin waves

copyright, C.M. Priest