Secrets by Ron Lester
How do they do it?
How have they made it?
Parental control through darkened ages,
when wars claimed brethren and friends,
when hippies proclaimed a higher peace,
love, and happiness,
while spitting ignorance through hypocrisy,
choosing beads over camouflage,
watching their “friends” become “their” enemies;
how did they do it?
Could they watch as wives
wept as widows raising single children?
Could they witness wives
trying to hold their heads high
as their husbands trembled in
closets and the darkest of corners,
fearing the shadows of a jungle
where their youth was swallowed?
Father came back distant…troubled,
stashing the nightmares in some lock box,
throwing away the key, to pretend he was back…normal, mother never asked any questions,
knowing she didn’t want to hear the answers,
so they focused their efforts on raising
healthy children, for a healthier future,
and time passed, almost forgotten,
almost unnoticed.
Twenty years raced by,
when the keys resurfaced,
hidden within dad’s cells,
agents cloaked in orange
knocked at our front door,
ignoring the “No Trespassing”
sign, they forced a knowing smile,
“Sir, we’re not through with you,”
they took dad away, in a silver box
reeking with the stench of decay.
Another mother widowed,
her children now grown,
care for her in her elder years,
as she cries for the husband
and father she lost so long ago,
she’s curled in a ball in their bed,
counting her days on their wall,
with her fingernails etching
father’s name…over and over,
until they were broken nubs bleeding,
a P.O.W. in her own home,
as father tried to hide from her,
the horrors he’d experienced before;
his secret a failure, we’re seeing…feeling.
© 26 days ago
Originally published at allpoetry.com.