SamadhiMuse

                           Gerda's Knife

      I watched 'Winds of War' on TV 
      and then I turned out the light
      And, on the stairs, in the dark, ascending
          I suddenly saw your father's knife as 
        it hung in your bedroom.

      Its white metal patient 
      these many years
      since another sun shown on it
          in the days of the German Reich.

      I could hear flags whipping, 
     red and black,
      against the green of trees
         and the gray of building stones

      And, for a moment, 
     I felt the eyes of countless men
      as their hands caressed 
     the handle's symbol
      reveling in the power and purpose 
     of their God given cause.

      and then, these many years later, 
     through chances too rare to say,
      I came ... and found it there in your room
         waiting patiently 
        through all the years of my childhood.

      A time machine 
     from another reality.
      A time that almost 
     changed my world.

      I look at old photos now, 
     black and white,
      and their images seem 
     so distant and unreal to me.
            
  but with your father's knife
        I could still hear the flags snapping
     in the fervent air of those years
        and I could feel the force of it all
      across the years.

                                    GALLAGHER
                                    7 Feb 83
                                    San Juan Capistrano

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —