The Winter They Bombed Pearl Harbor

Image borrowed from Bing

THE WINTER THEY BOMBED
PEARL HARBOR


All winter peacocks screamed, strutting the same
slow pose. At dawn, we smashed the ice with hammers,
dumped pots of boiling water steaming into troughs
for beaks of preening peacocks. They shoved
each other off like cousins bunched
at the only mirror at church.

My logger father whittled a forest with buzz saws,
the roar and buzz of steel and mosquitoes
more than my ears were tuned for.
My sister and I played keep-away with feathers,
dazzling the surly turkeys and peacocks with footwork,

lobbing frozen dirt clods like grenades,
until our father called us. When roads were frozen,
I jockeyed the throttle of a John Deere
rusted before the war, hauling logs and hay bales
to farmers miles away. The war was almost lost

when my father enlisted, Pearl Harbor bombed,
the fall of Bataan all we heard for hours
on every station at night, except for our parents
talking softly after bedtime
and peacocks screaming in the dark.


Walt McDonald