Soldier Boy

Soldier Boy

Birth: August 8, 1947

Death:  January 27, 2015

A casualty of war ~ fifty years after serving in the United States Army. 

 

Standing six feet

five inches

An athlete

a saint

a poet

a songwriter

a musician

my big strong courageous brother.

A sometimes seemingly (to some humans)

too-compassionate business person

a stand-up comic

Time tortures him as he works

to block out

childhood flashes of unfortunate moments

 

He saves my life

not once,

three times…

the first time I am two years old and he is five;

I see our stunningly beautiful mother

watching me

from above the water at the side of the pool

where I am

at the bottom ~ she is

choosing to do nothing ~

perhaps because

her family has historically taught children

how to swim

by

throwing them into a river

and allowing them to

find their way to survival.

Another time

I am twelve years when my

remarkable brother pulls out of the cool waters

of a clear freshwater lake where I have blacked out

Still later at fifteen-years-old

swimming competitively in the finals competition

I am drowning

in full view of spectators

after inhaling a back-wave off the pool wall

having held my breath the entire lap

of the event of Individual Medley.

I swim three more laps with no air

and blackout, sinking.

Du leaps a six-foot chain fence

dives into the pool of finals racers

to pull me out

for resuscitation

after seeing me lose consciousness.

 

He goes to war

at eighteen

“For our country,”

says he,

“Because Dad went,”

and he longs for

his father’s approval

 

It is an unquiet

and complicated time ~

Like many of our young,

when called into service and

responding to

guerrilla warfare

confronted by a small child

already destined for death

by his or her culture

who is strapped with explosives

Running toward my brother’s squad

My brother removes the child

with robot-like coldness

Forty-five years later

he tells me,

his tag-along baby sister.

He,

a devoted lover

of all children.

 

He returns to the

United States of America

After Korea and Vietnam

He is a wise and

very old man of twenty-one.

We Americans spit on him.

We Americans yell at him.

We Americans are uncertain how to support him.

There are no jobs for him

No creature comforts

Yet he is first to arrive

to cradle me,

his baby sister,

as I work to breathe life into my own

freshly deceased baby boy.

 

He runs…

and runs…

and runs some more

To avoid

then embrace

Drugs

Alcohol

Women

And multiple religions.

Life gallops on

while

the path continues

with blistering harshness

and labels

Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome

Agent Orange

Malaria

Heart Disease

Dementia

Alzheimer’s

Brain hemorrhaging

Each contracted

in Korea and Vietnam

Between ages eighteen and twenty-one.

 

I watch

My heart

on standby

I cannot breathe

Life’s ending

arrives as

I sing to him

Three thousand miles away

Space separates us

I cannot get to him

to hold him and

to go with him as

he leaves our world

as his physical body

fades.

Roads are shut down

Weather is severe.

Every two hours I call

A kind assistant places

the phone to his ear

I hear his efforts to speak

His moans

I hear his precious breath

He is comatose

yet his medical assistant tells me

he cries

a single tear

upon hearing my voice sing

His favorite song

Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream

 

I sing more

And more

And then I cannot stop singing

And laughing

Once again,

I remind him of the time

 

He drops me

from high in the air as I balance on his raised legs

squealing because we break the family record of

a flying eagle

Du’s legs are shaking as he lowers me

then he loses control

crashing my head

through the glass front television screen . . .

Papa was going to be mad ~

And the Samurai sword from my birthplace of Japan

he drops it from the top shelf

of the closet

it impales his foot

to the wood floor

of our home ~

After calling me

for help

he has to pull it out himself

because

I have fainted at the sight of

the spurting fountain of his blood

flowing across the old wooden floor.

 

I continue to sing all the songs

he begged for

as a child.

As the last unsteady

note fades

I know

The Higher Power of our understanding

is watching

My brother

is finally

home.

Writing/Photography/Illustrations by FawnRising©2015
March 10, 2015
Le Lac du mon Père
Crystal Lake Florida United States of America Earth

 

~ fawnrising2015 Published on Moodscope.com, Great Britain, 2015DouglasDavidMurpheyHonored3.17.2015 (2)