My Dad the Navy Man

                        (Snapshots from 1950)

Stuck on Midway during the action in Korea standing

on an empty beach, clear blue ocean, blue like the heavens,

behind, his sandals on over his socks.

Dressed in whites holding a gooney bird up by its

white wings, not hurting it, just holding it.  “Here it is.

This is what I’ve been telling you about,”

he’s probably saying.

Posing with a hanging twelve foot shark,

looking more uncertain than proud.

Lying back in his sad, sagging wooden bunk having

a smoke, a very strange, I have to say eerie, look across

his face, a look of longing, of forlorn foreboding.

My Dad the Navy Man stuck

a million damn miles from home while mom and me

waited back home wondering how in the hell this

was helping our country win the war.

— Michael Estabrook