Your Father’s Son

Ernest Hemingway’s Passport Photo, 1923. (public domain)

Your soul was large
It needed to consume newness
— Again and again
But the Chicago frontier hemmed you in
You couldn’t expand.
So you crossed the cold,
Impersonal Atlantic
To the hot,
Exploding Italian front
Where death nearly took you.
It was simple, you said
You looked at it and knew.
But you consumed it and moved
Gaining immunity, it seemed
For death couldn’t take you
On its own- though it tried
— Again and again
But it couldn’t take you
Until Ketchum
Where your father’s shadow waited.

© Scott Edgar, 2021