My Father’s Demons

My father was seventeen, a high school junior,
perhaps thinking of the summer ahead, his 18th
birthday and the Buick he was going to buy and fix
up for himself, a sweet car; instead he answered 
the country’s call to arms, leaving school and joining 
the Navy, finding himself in the Pacific aboard 
the Terror, a mine layer, headed for Japan,
where 11 months later a Kamikaze Zero dropped 
from the sky; he was one of the lucky ones, 
they said, among the 123 wounded, the 48 dead 
or missing, carrying the scars and shrapnel 
to his grave many years later, in old age.
Mustered out after the war, he returned to school, 
graduating with boys whose only action was the back seat
of their fathers’ cars, and married my mother, 
settling down at the end of WWII. He never talked
about it, though we’d seen his ribbons and uniform
and I’d memorized his Blue Jackets Manual, knew
my semaphore and general quarters procedures, 
even dreamed of a Naval career in junior high,
a dream abandoned during my war, Vietnam, the protests
and the battles brought into our living room, 
the anger and hatred, suffering and death and destruction,
seeing there on the TV what my father had seen at sea.
He said nothing still, but busied himself with work
and home, providing for us, or buried in his Bible, 
long hours alone, till nearing his own death
he confided what he remembered most from those years,
the burials at sea, shipmate after shipmate, weighted down
and committed to watery graves, witnessed by the lucky ones
who carried, as my father did, those images, those scars,
constant reminders weighing him down those 63 years, 
those unshared images carried alone and silent 
till he faced his own death at the hands of age and time, 
freed only then from his demons, as are all 
who bear witness to battle, freed on their judgement day, 
penance paid, pardoned for what they had done, 
perhaps, in the name of freedom, loyalty, and country.