April 13, 2009
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The Life He Never Knew (For Cecial Lorn Hunter)
1927
He was thirteen when he died
and his great delight was horses.
He had a slow and steady hand
with a plow at twelve years old.
By the age of nine, he had four sisters.
Slow to read, he learned by seven,
and at four, still sucked his thumb.
His gait was sure at two,
his strong fingers gripping edges.
Their first born, and a son.1944
He was a soldier now,
his uniform reflected in
a sea of foreign blood,
and his seed spilled inside the legs
of a dark haired girl with eyes
too large and melancholy.
He wretched at the thought of his wife
rocking back and forth with worry.
He strayed from her this night only
the bourbon too weak to cool
the heat of a morning
when death erupted from his hands.1990
He sat at his great-niece’s graduation
shifting on the wooden bench,
squinting at a blur of blue and white students
walking towards uncertain futures.
The youth made him weep
though he could not remember why
as his papery hand spindled over
a last patch of pale hair.
