Poems in Memory of
GySgt Roger J. Shields, USMC (ret)
by Ronald Shields
BROKEN SPIRIT
FATHER AND SON
Knowing how heavy the leaves of despair can be
my father lifts them from my scarred hands,
drops them into the river.
We watch as they float with the current,
out to the Sargasso Sea.
My father worked and read.
He drank and laughed.
There was no other way.
Thirty years in the Marine Corps –
then left to find his place in this world.
Tonight I watch my father sleep
under the light of his reading lamp.
His large hands
draped like orchids over his knees.
My father’s place is among men.
Strong men tested in battle,
reclaiming the world from madness.
Fractured by war, I am left to rise with a black scar.
A black swan
rising from the tar of torment and doubt.
Wrapped in scarlet ribbons, a hero’s nightmare
is a tomb from which to rise.
He believes I have done the same,
though in my battle
machines replaced the hands of men
and brought madness into the world.
I have returned to his world poor,
in need of redemption or restoration.
In need of a hand that will bend
with the curve of my broken spirit.
Hatred could have been a shudder in my father’s soul.
Silence could have been a frock for anger.
Once a young man fleeing poverty,
he returned from Viet Nam furious for freedom,
plagued by desires and limits.
I no longer speak the common language.
My country is a ghost town.
With the old loneliness intact,
I have no roots but the ones I drag behind.
I am poor.
The river will freeze over in winter.
In time, our ashes will mingle on the river ice
and float to the Gulf of Mexico,
the way snow drifts in the from the west
to fall, melt and find its place in this world.
The Warrior Heart November 2014 - 17