Poetry by Robert R. Woods

Thursday

May 17, 2012

The new poetry site seems to be a washout. Is there not a site on the internet where there are serious, knowledgeable poets who are interested in poetry and discussion? I need to find some real artists, people who get what it is we're doing.  AND here's a new poem.

My Father’s Day

Sometimes I think about my father.

He was a man. A 40s style man. Big hands,

rough and scaly from working. Crippled

hands broken in three or more places,

scarred and battered from pool hall

brawling.

He was a tough man, a drinking man.

Hamm’s Beer in a can never in a bottle

or a glass. Whiskey, sometimes, straight

out of a silver flask that he always carried

in the back pocket of his black overalls.

Just a kid, he was, during WWII. Enlisted

at sixteen, a Gunner’s Mate in the South

Pacific. Just a kid in the middle of a very

big war.

In ’42 The Wasp, my father’s ship, was

blasted by three enemy torpedoes

dumping my dad and all his buddies

into the cold Pacific. They treaded

water three days waiting for a ship

to come by and fish them out.

My father was a mean man, a fighting man.

No weapons other than two fists full of callused

knuckles, a firecracker temper, and a hateful need

to see the world beaten to death.

Gentleness was a trait my father never indulged in.

It was weakness to him. Too many buddies

he’d seen die, too many friends in civilian life

dead because... well, because they were just too

soft to survive this life.

And I don’t remember a single kindness from

my father. Not to me, my brother or my sister.

Never understood why but he seemed to hate us.

Hated us even more than he hated that submarine

that blew the Wasp out of the water back in ‘42

and left him swimming with the dead, the dying

and an ocean full of hungry sharks.

                                                                             rrw o5-16-12