He contemplated the world
beneath the sea, mysteries lodged

among ridges of coral, iridescent cloisonné
costumes on fish, the treasures

of sunken ships, hidden unspent
at the bottom of dark oceans.

He beat his war bride wife
into submission, but was a fool

for Barbara Stanwyck, who rode
with men and destroyed them

when the Furies took her over.
He was taken over by drink

and fell off the neighbor's pier
while fishing for perch; just once,

he was on his knees, sobbing
to the wife he disdained.

He loved vanilla creams--dark
chocolate cones whose insides

are soft and sweet, but no one
can eat more than one.

He played casino and five-card draw
and stole whiskey when he could;

though moonshine made him sick
to death. He smoked a pipe

and cigars and cigarettes and was
never seen without a mustache

or crisply ironed heavy khakis
over boxer shorts. Inside the drawer

with his underwear and pipes, he
kept a Norman Mailer novel,

but no one ever saw him read
it or any other book.

He sweated in a tin building
and built mobile homes most

of his life. In the war, he built
the docks at Cherbourg,

and the railway bridges
from St. Lo to Le Mans.

Somewhere in Europe, he ran
an Army canteen, then lost

his sergeant's stripes--
no one knows why.

He taught me names of trees
and toxic plants to avoid;

he played cards with me late
at night, and read a Bible story

to me sometimes. We fished
from his boat and saw logs

that were alligators. Once,
when he was drunk and raging,

he held a shotgun to my temple,
then thought it through and beat

my mother instead. One day
he dropped to the floor;

three days later, he was dead
at sixty-two. I have the flag

from his funeral, though
I've never seen his grave.

Diane Elayne Dees is a writer and psychotherapist in Louisiana. She has poems recently published or forthcoming in several journals, including Out of Line, Mobius, The Binnacle, The Eleventh Muse, and the anthology, Hurricane Blues: How Katrina and Rita Ravaged a Nation. A series of her poems is being read on "The Naturalist's Datebook," a segment of Martha Stewart Living Radio.