for some Americans passing

Before I get too comfortable on your couch,
pull my Bostonian’s off, slide
my feet, still twisting in those brown
dress socks , over the Saxony rug
your mother washed with Tide,
the spot your dad would sit eating his
dinner and rooting for the Pirates

and if you could unearth the origin of everything;
shadows, the refusal to accept as true
that all our dad’s have gone on now,
yours being the last to go
but needed two live in nurses,
to get his story out perhaps. To
document the stuff younger minds quickly
forget.

Then we got the call, and it’s always a call,
not a flyover drone or a Mitsubishi A6m Zero
(where you could see the pilots goggles)
in that battle of the eastern Solomon’s in 42.
Or a glistening sign on the side of a goat
announcing your passing.

Or any  Greek goat, naked but unharmed,
walking thru that order of peonies
then turning to suckle the baby Zeus
as Amaltheia did, nursing him with milk
in a cave on Mount Ida. And like all
the nurses I’ve known, forever

placed among the stars.

By Dana Rushin

Biography:

Dana Rushin
African American Poet,
living in Detroit.
Wayne State University student….current.
unmarried. still looking.