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Audio: A version read by the author.

 

There is a grass still
grows that I once mowed,
deep green St. Augustine
I cut in patterned lines.
My father bought this ideal
family plot, a red brick ranch
with plenty of yard and a nice
swimming pool, an unusual coral blue.
The color took him
back to when they bombed the fleet,
at anchor and asleep, and how
after that they shocked his brain
and placed him in the shade
beside the box of paints
he’d hauled from ship to ship,
sketching mushroom clouds
en plein air like Gauguin
swinging in his hammock
before it became his grave.
The diagnosis was severe
depression with possible future
complications from exposure
to high levels
of nuclear radiation,
having been among the first
wave of men to stand within
the radius of the blast after
the surrender of Japan.
But they couldn’t say for sure.
He did his best,
a doctor of dental surgery.
But he was never much
for beating his chest.
A father people called doctor
had a certain station that
carried with it expectations.
Our neighborhood was full
of fancy M.D. degrees, each driving
his Mercedes in dark shades
and tennis whites.
Day or night, what he liked
to do was snooze to the shrill
glow of an AM transistor radio
bleating the news while we lay awake.
All we could think about
was that there was a world outside,
but only half a man to provide.
The year I turned sixteen
and he was fifty-nine,
my mother had to get
him out of bed and dressed
to look his best,
and the lawn, which he’d kept,
grew sick with weeds and neglect.
As for the house,
my sister swept it clean,
so when our friends came by
all we had to do was leave
him in his room.
Later, we found out
that he’d seen
men and sand burned to glass.
But back then we didn’t know.
We didn’t know back then
how deep he’d go.
We couldn’t any longer care
for him at home.
And, after that, someone
else had to mow
in lines that left
tracks in rows
that showed where
the blade had cut
one swath down
before circling back around.