Lessons From My Father

It was such a long time ago

I was a young boy.

My father seemed permanent

hiding from me his fragile mortality.

I did not know we were so poor then.

Always feeling warm and safe near him.

The world was to become

more dangerous than usual.

Darkness hung from the sky

like spiders webs.

Noises that came in the dark

from bogymen and monsters in the closet

Kept my father from sleep that night

The white pointed heads of the hooded

Klansmen on horseback passed by our home.

I knew then he may not always have the power

to make the ghost go away.

I remember a few years later

in the jungles of Nam

Lay on my belly in the undergrowth

I heard each crackle

of the nights jungle chatter.

My trigger finger on guard

sleepless and in silence.

I learned then that my father’s lessons

were alive in me.

And that in such bad places

 a boy needs his father with him.