Pandemic Poem a Day, Day Two

WALKING DOWN THE STREET

I am stopped by a man who wants to know

if my hat is for Navy. “No, it’s my dad’s

Army Air Corps cap,” I say, hold it at arm’s length

so he sees the B-17. “Is he alive?” he asks.

“No, he died a year ago, age 93.”

The man seems stricken, embarrassed.

“I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, don’t be,” I say. “He ‘lived to be a gray-haired

wonder.’” I don’t say “and not to have lived locked up

separated from his family, waving from windows,

while 2,000 died alone in ‘homes.’”

In echelon, we carry on. 

NOTE: If you are here for the poem and not for how my poetry sausage is ground, your work is done and you can skip this note. But for those interested, here is the background on my writing the poem. 

The title and first seven and a half lines happened just like this, at least in my memory. So did lines 8, 9, and 10. Maybe I should have stopped here, but I was thinking about my dad and how much he loved the songs he learned in the Army Air Corps (which is today's U.S. Air Force). He taught them all to us kids, and I may have been the only eight-year girl who  gleefully sang:

My gal's a corker,
She's a New Yorker,
I buy her everything
To keep her in style.
She wears silk underwear
I wear my G.I. pair,
Hey boys,
That's where my money goes.

That and the "Caissons Go Rolling Along," and our very favorite, now called "The U.S. Air Force Song." Why I looked it up today, I'll never know because I knew it by heart and sang it with my dad all the time. (Sometimes now I sing it to my dog while we walk, and I still end it with "Nothing can stop the Army Air Corps," instead of "Nothing can stop the U.S. Air Force.")

But when I looked it up, I realized there is a fourth verse we never sang. I loved this couplet:

If you'd live to be a grey-haired wonder
Keep the nose out of the blue

and I thought Dad would like being called a "grey-haired wonder" at least as much as being called 93 years old, and I thought about the final line, in echelon, we carry on. Yes, Yes we do.