Skip to main content

Bombing Party




One
My grandfather was a champion.
Two
Though he probably mastered his technique on the Scottish Highlands before coming to the states,
he had an arm.
Three.
Had it been a different time he might’ve been a baseball star,
but this was war and a newly adopted country, so he became a soldier.

One
He became an infantryman when they noticed how his hands were rather large.
Two
With just a few short practices they noticed that he threw where he was looking:
accurate, landing the grenade in the zone almost every single time.
Three
Until he was deployed he was entered into contests:  a champion grenade thrower
and his platoon took every prize.

One
As a member of a bombing party he’d run from trench to trench and throw grenades.
Two
After the trench was cleared they’d drink water, smoke cigarettes, rearrange their gear.
Three
On to the next, clearing them with precision throws as they went.

One
When you throw a grenade, you count to three before it goes off
Two
But sometimes it malfunctions and you count again
Three
Yet, if you move on, it can still blow at any time.

One
My grandfather got shot in the war and collapsed into a trench.
Two
For three days he bled into the fetid water; bodies stacked upon the field.
Three
Until the battle ended and the Red Cross pulled him free.


One
He’d watch me practice pitching from his porch until the evening
Two
An ashtray full of butts would smoke in ruins,
as he’d say, “You’re holding it too long.
Three
“Just wind and throw.
Look where you want the ball to go.”

One
He nearly died so my Dad could live a couple of different times.
Two
Yet it didn’t keep my pops from enlisting and getting trained to land bombers on a field.
Three
My father never talks about Korea just that he’s glad I never went to war.

One
My dad and I love baseball and the slow count of the throw on its way to home.
Two.
The thud of ball in leather; the crack of bat against the ball
Three
And the crowd exploding as the ball is up and gone.

One
Two
Three…
Labels:

Comments

Gary Glazner said…
Love the poem sooooo much!
5:54 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

"That's Scaughtland for ya!"

The United Kingdom Up at the top of that map, basically the top half, is a tiny nation with a big footprint.  With roughly the same population as Minnesota, Scotland has a land mass the size of South Carolina, yet there are more people in the United States that have Scottish and/or Scotch-Irish ancestry than live in Scotland. My family is one of those. In the course of growing up, I was indoctrinated to celebrate my Scottish ancestry (primarily by my grandmother but we'll talk about that later).      So a year ago, my wife took a trip with her mother to Japan.  I looked at the pictures that she posted, and when I'd talk to her on the phone, I noticed something.  She was happy.  This is not to say she's always unhappy, but this was different.  She was having a good time, engaged in the world, curious, and happy-like no matter what the challenge.  And traveling to Japan with her mother posed some interesting challenge...
Post a Comment
Read more

Peregrinating the Albuquerque Bosque

  The Map. Overview: Starting in the San Juans in Colorado, the Rio Grande "is the twenty-second longest river in the world and the fourth or fifth longest in North America" ( Texas State Historical Society ).  While the river is characterized by the area it flows through, the river from Elephant Butte Dam to the south to Cochiti Dam in the north is called the Middle Rio Grande.  And in the middle of the middle Rio Grande is the roughly 20 plus miles that flows through Albuquerque.  From an airplane, the Rio Grande is a brown ribbon bordered a green ribbon.  That green ribbon is the Bosque .  I've always been fascinated really exploring an area, getting a sort of overview of an area then drilling down to really get it.  It's led to me hiking the Sandias from end to end and then hiking outlying trails multiple times, biking all the trails in the Cedro Peak area because someone put them on a map, trying different routes to get to ...
3 comments
Read more

The Day the War Began

Originally written shortly after the protest in 2003, an audio of this was broadcast on KUNM on the year anniversary of the war's inception. Hopefully, reasons for writing about this will become fewer and fewer. The Day the War Began.             Three deep and two dozen across, the Albuquerque police department blocked eastbound Central Avenue. They wore Army fatigues, gas masks and helmets, held black batons, yet had no badges or name tags that identified each as a person, an individual. Judging from the surrounding army of police cars and police horses, and the four cruisers that closed Central further to the east, their function was clear. Not only do the authorities want to silence dissent, but they want to keep those not politically vocal from becoming aware of dissent at all.             One of the cops held what looked like a toy water cannon and swung it back and fo...
Post a Comment
Read more