Poem of the Day: “Pearl Harbor: USS Oklahoma” by Terri Lynn Cummings

Songs of Eretz Poetry Review is pleased to present “Pearl Harbor:  USS Oklahoma” by Terri Lynn Cummings.  A brief biography of Ms. Cummings may be found here:  http://eretzsongs.blogspot.com/2015/11/poem-of-day-starving-artist-by-terri.html.

Pearl Harbor:  USS Oklahoma

Terri Lynn Cummings

For the Parents of the Fallen

The first thing we saw when we walked

into the Pearl Harbor WWII Memorial

were granite markers. They stood at attention,

etched with the names and ranks of 429 marines

and sailors who had served aboard the USS Oklahoma.

Surrounded by tourists with cameras, we paused

at the names of three brothers,

Leroy, Malcolm, and Randolph Barber,

lost in the battleship’s belly. My husband and I

imagined their parents when they heard the knock,

opened the door, and saw two sergeants standing

on the stoop, bearing the news.

Our own wounds bloomed like a rose

when we remembered our son had recently died,

a 15-year veteran of disease – not soldier,

but a fighter. When a child is lost,

time freezes into shards of memories –

the last time you saw him, your final words,

unspoken thoughts. Like all parents,

we expected to go first, but instead, we buried

our son. Placed flowers on a lonely grave.

Poet’s Notes:  Sometimes, imagination is a curse or a blessing. In writing this poem, imagination was a blessing.  Two months before my husband and I visited Pearl Harbor, our son had passed away in Oklahoma City. We did not expect to walk through the Oklahoma Memorial the moment we arrived. Yet it seemed appropriate. In mourning, we read the victims’ names and bled for them, their families, and ourselves.

Editor’s Note:  I am moved by the way the prosaic first part of the poem melts into the poetic as the poet ties the loss of the Oklahoma to the loss of her boy.