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
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