Jim Howe Poet Free verse

Hawaiian Pearl

Waters around the Arizona seethed,
burned with blood and oil
as Chaos gripped the Harbor.

Uncle Bud reeled about the deck.
His voice rising against the din:
“Abandon ship!  Abandon ship!
Abandon the goddamn ship.”

That afternoon
in a makeshift medical camp
he died from shrapnel wounds.

My grandmother told me years later
that he had saved others.

Fire, flesh, and smoke dissolve into the sweep
of a larger panorama
when volcanoes formed these isles.

In Iowa, the family gathered at church
to celebrate with a brunch
the first Sunday of Advent.

Father MacDonald announced the attack.
People scurried home to huddle around radios
that crackled with static.

Forty years later,
a fine ash from Mount St. Helens passed
over Grandma’s grave-side service.
And she rests next to her son.

Her mother-of-pearl music box,
the one Bud had given her,
almost kept her company.

But she willed it to me.
I placed it on a shelf by her picture in the living room.

It still plays.

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