A piece of blank verse for a grandfather.
The change was coming for the carpenter,
right there, on that gray splintery deck. He rocked,
the cries of grandchildren and gulls all raced
flat out to grab a mind gone elsewhere. His
aged eyes and Reagan era glasses watched
the edge of folding rolling white sea fringe,
still folding. Reaching seaward; backwards on
and over ripples, over years to see
his SS Nash and Wake Island’s pock-marked
dunes, cratered by the war; the coral chunk
he stole while out on reef patrol; the fleet
of bobbing cigarettes he set adrift
to mark his long path home. He scans from lap
to wave to year to here; scanning with that
same spellbound focus docs employ to pore
and analyze his tests and mold their stark results.
They’ll see if folding sheets of Blue-Cross scans
and images of blemished cells can prove
just how his lungs are Wake Island, and how
they’ve come to bring an ashen winter’s blight
while living leaves still hold to trees in this,
his August.
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