In
the summer of 1946, the young man stepped
from ship
to train to bus and sat on broken springs
and worn
leather as a silver motor coach
lumbered
through the Midwest spewing black exhaust
into the
already-hazy morning.
He looked
out the window, saw children playing tag,
soldiers
wading in waves while trying to take Omaha Beach.
The bus
backfired, and he heard gunshots,
heard
cloudless thunder from gray battleships
riding
the offshore swell.
He heard
the whining of the bus engine,
rapid
artillery fire spitting over razor wire.
After
long hours, a yellow straw suitcase
hanging
from his fingers, he climbed three wooden steps
and stood
on the gray porch in front of a screen door.
“Mama,
I’m home. I’m home.”
After a
night’s rest and a pitcher of lemonade,
his
routine was the same from morning to dusk.
He stood
in the fields, a scarecrow looking for German troops
riding
jeeps into San Michel.
The black
crows overhead failed to realize that it was war,
or maybe
they did.
~William Hammett
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