My Regimented Father
His blue eyes gaze
From beneath
The wide-brimmed hat
He wore off to the side
In Burma during the war.
Devilishly handsome, he smiles,
Though there is an emptiness in his eyes.
Chest hair peeks out from the top of
His khaki shirt,
Opened to the second button,
And I wonder…
How brave was he over there?
He was in communications during
World War II
And, knowing my father,
The only action he sought
Was in brothels along the Burma Road.
After serving his country,
He married his third cousin, Frances
And had three children he hardly knew.
Doors opening and closing
Marked his influence on their lives.
His regimen
Was rolling in at 5 a.m.,
Citing car trouble.
My mother would yell,
He would deny,
And I would curl up in a ball
In bed with knife-like
Pains in my stomach
At the age of six and seven and…
One Christmas morning,
Two days after
The miscarriage.
Four figures knelt
Before the tree, crying
Over the stillborn
Already named Stephen
And Ernie
Whose name had become a profanity
And whose absence was palpable.
Decades later,
There emerged a photo of my father
As a young man, wearing
An Indiana Jones hat —
One of three photos
His second wife posted on
His obituary website,
Where his list of survivors
Failed to mention
My sister,
My brother,
My niece,
Or me.
With the ease
Of words pressed
Against the screen,
We disappeared,
Just as he had vanished
From our lives in 1975,
Though the only one
Who felt his absence then
Was my mother who said,
“He was better than nothing.”
