French Leave Piloting to Sorrow

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

Charles Randall Joseph Taulelle

Perhaps his disappearance was not quite

French leave although he went to France.  He left

And never came again, not in the tight

Womb stretched by him with all the swollen heft

Of maleness, all its love or lust, and caused

That son who never saw him, thus unknown

By him, or even seen.  Love was paused

And never turned back on.  This son was prone

Perhaps to lead a life to cause his son

To lose his father, too, across the wide

United States, to cause his wife to shun

Him, and to cause another love denied.

..That son, though, died before his father far

….Away, leaving something deeper than a scar.

~  Phillip Whidden