Poetry: Belly Gunner
Belly Gunner
My father’s father flew beneath the mass
And sweating steel of allied bomber wings
Defending stranger friends both now and past
Hunched with faith ‘neath a heavy hull heaving
And fragile shield of frigid glass below
When cruel crack of cannon-spitting fear
Hammered hope as sick skies coughed flak and foe.
But from that battle time has tossed him here.
No screaming shells expose the night, and I
Have never heard a dying man repent
With whispered words. My father sometimes tries
To tell the tale his father won’t recount.
This man who naps at noon on Sundays once
For heaven waged a hellish war and won.
Copyright © 2019 Samuel A. Hamer
[Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash]