War at Home and Away
lessons from my father


It was such a long time ago.
A time when being born black
in the South was a hard thing.
I was only a young boy.
My father seemed permanent then
Hiding from me his fragile mortality.
I did not understand
that we were so poor back then.
or why we were hated so badly.

my father taught me how to survive.
Always feeling warm and safe near him.
The world was to become
more dangerous than usual.
Darkness and fear hung from the sky
like ghostly spiders webs.

Noises that came in the dark
were not from bogymen
and monsters in the closet.
They kept my father from sleep that night.
The white pointed heads of the hooded
klansmen on horseback passed by our home.
I knew at that moment
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 gunfire
and the nights jungle chatter.

My trigger finger on guard
sleepless and in silence.
holding my breathe.
I learned then that all my father’s lessons
were alive in me.
And that in such bad places
a boy needs his father with him.