Sgt. Leonard W. Adams

Hero

While you were wailing
in your newborn crib
I was tuned into
the Mets and Red Sox,
watching with my mom,
and we thought the ball
moving through Buckner's
legs was the greatest
and worst thing that could
happen between us,
that a sport that could
split a mom and son
must have no value
or mean everything.

When you were seven
I left for college,
me and my mother
on the sidewalk turned
around a corner,
her quivering lips,
my sister honking
the horn. In what world
should a parent be
separated from
their child by such
distance? Not like this.
We cried for how long
we would have to drive
to see each other.

In this incursion
I want to debate
policy, theory,
the potential use
of military
force as a method
for encouraging
the spread of freely
renewable, made
by the people for
the people and of
the people regimes,
a debate about
the sword and the word,
and with what we lead.

Unfortunately,
people are dying,
and being slaughtered,
and placed in harms way,
and more turned into
killers who suffer
a bit each moment
they are under siege,
away from their homes
and kept from mothers
who love them, fathers
who wish their children
could be farmers, work
in a factory
or a skyscraper.

I load up my car,
a full tank of gas
and head out to work,
forgetting to call
home, tell my mother,
who I know worries,
how much I miss her,
and miss the ballgames
we use to sit down
together to watch,
the smell of popcorn
with salt and butter,
the crack of the bat
and thump of a ball
felled into a mitt.

So, as much as talk
intrigues me, it's not
my own enjoyment
or mental challenge
I here seek. Instead
I'll call you hero
and your Mom, goddess,
who gave birth and raised
such a sweet child
who would dedicate
their fate to winning
a fair victory
against an unfair
enemy. Hero,
that relevant word.

thom ingram