To Our Veterans

Happy days to those who serve and served...Veteran's Day 2010

Captain J.F.Hartzer
USMC WWII

I am forever grateful to have not served in the service of our nation's military. My father did and I grew up in a big NAVY town, Jacksonville, Florida...Though not truly a veteran's poem per se...here's a poem I wrote called, The Perfect Father...

THE PERFECT FATHER Making peace that's the hardest part the most difficult phase the last part of the struggle When I can admit to my deep down woundedness I am touched   I am opened I am ready then for that rescue copter to come to touch down to lift me from the field to take me to that healing place where cool hands touch skin cut rough with bloody glass and the torn shards of a life lived in a lonely sort of way, always afraid of the next hand slapped those cutting words ... bad bad bad boy When I can really touch the blood feel the gaping holes I am ready then to leave behind all these crosses all the machine-gunned memories I am ready then to walk the blue green beaches of spring where waves break fresh crests arching back and palms rattle their songs in the breeze where pelicans fly silent lines and the sky is safe no planes no tanks   no guns   no perpetrators When I can admit to my deep down woundedness I will have touched the spark that no doctor can prescribe I will know then that the state of my giftedness lies in rising up out of the well I will know then that the truth of it all rests in the gentle hands of the perfect father who now knocks at my door and yours When you open the door He is standing there the most perfect father you have ever seen He is in fact THE PERFECT FATHER He will say to you I'M HUNGRY MAN and you will say ME TOO, LET'S EAT and the Perfect Father will enter your home taking off his suede hat first then knocking the dirt from his boots and you and the Perfect Father will journey toward the kitchen and there laid out before you both will be the finest meal you have ever seen a meal made in heaven and music will be playing something like THE AGE OF AQUARIUS or MANTOVANI And soon your dog will bring slippers for you and your cat will follow with slippers for the Perfect Father He is looking at you now from across the table He says again I'M HUNGRY and you say again ME TOO and together you sit down saying SHALL I CARVE?  Jeff Hartzer copyright 1984-present from Jeff's book, FLAMINGOS