~ ONE ART’s Top 10 Most-Read Poets of June 2024 ~
Tag: W. D. Ehrhart
Turning Seventy-five by W. D. Ehrhart
Turning Seventy-five
It isn’t that I fear
growing older—such things as fear,
reluctance or desire
play no part at all
except as light and shadow sweep a hillside
on a Sunday afternoon,
astonishing the eye but passing on
at sunset with the land
still unchanged: the same rocks,
the same trees, tall grass gently drifting—
merely that I do not understand
how my age has come to me
or what it means.
It’s almost like some small
forest creature one might find
outside the door some frosty autumn morning,
tired, lame, uncomprehending,
almost calm.
You want to stroke its fur,
pick it up, mend the leg and send it
scampering away—but something
in its eyes says, “No,
this is how I live, and how I die.”
And so, a little sad, you let it be.
Later when you look,
the thing is gone.
And just like that these
seventy-five years
have come and gone,
and I do not understand at all
why I see an old gray-haired man
inside the mirror when a small
boy still lives inside this body
wondering
what causes laughter, why
nations go to war, who paints the startling
colors of the rainbow on a gray vaulted sky,
and when I will be old enough
to know.
*
W. D. Ehrhart is author of Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems (McFarland). His most recent collection is At Smedley Butler’s Grave (Moonstone).
Thirteen Ways of Looking at Plagiarism by W. D. Ehrhart
Thirteen Ways of Looking at Plagiarism
1. My mom helped me a little.
2. Thomas Jefferson wrote that?
3. I did not use ChatGPT.
4. I’m not allowed to use ChatGPT?
5. I don’t know who put my name on this.
6. Well, yes, that does look like my handwriting.
7. What’s the big deal, anyway?
8. What are you, a Communist?
9. What are you, a Republican?
10. It’s not like I robbed a bank or something.
11. The cat’s got my tongue.
12. May I have a glass of water?
13. The dog ate my homework.
*
W. D. Ehrhart is author of Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems (McFarland). His most recent collection is At Smedley Butler’s Grave (Moonstone).
Teaching My Father to Hug by W. D. Ehrhart
Teaching My Father to Hug
I had to teach my father how to hug.
For years, he’d grip me by both arms,
one hand on either bicep, firmly
holding me away from him, our bodies
never touching. I’ve no idea why.
Men don’t hug? Afraid he once held
tight, he’d not let go again? Beats me,
but in my thirties, I got married,
and he’d hug my wife the same way.
I finally decided this would just not do.
Every time he tried to grab my arms,
I’d step inside his grip and pull him
close to me, a bear hug he could not
escape. I did this time and time again
until he finally got the hint, gave up,
and hugged me back as if he meant it.
We had our problems, Dad and me,
a lifetime of arguments and ugly
moments and miscommunications,
but he learned to hug before he died,
and I feel pretty good about that.
*
W. D. Ehrhart is an ex-Marine sergeant and veteran of the American War in Vietnam. His latest book is Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems, McFarland & Company.
When I’m Gone by W. D. Ehrhart
When I’m Gone
“When I’m gone, I hope I live in the low lying fog that
blankets the tops of the little mountains around here in
the mornings.”
—Arle Bielanko
Or maybe in among the leaves of those
magnificent old trees you love so much.
Wouldn’t that be something? Just a whisper,
but enough to let you know I haven’t
really gone so far away, and I still
love you even now, even forever.
So let me be a whisper in the trees,
a gossamer wisp of fog, a twinkling
star in the heavens of your heart
to guide you through the years ahead
until we’re both where we belong,
arm in arm, out there in the cosmos.
*
W. D. Ehrhart is an ex-Marine sergeant and veteran of the American War in Vietnam. His latest book is Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems, McFarland & Company.
Poetry in Motion by W. D. Ehrhart
Poetry in Motion
So my buddies and I are eating a pizza
in a picnic pavilion in a public park
in Bridgeton, New Jersey, and this guy
in a Bridgeton Municipal pick-up truck
pulls up and stops, gets out, pulls
the top off a trash barrel next to us,
pulls out a loaded trash bag, ties it shut,
and without even looking, throws it
back over his shoulder one-handed
twenty feet into the truck bed.
Clunk. Perfect. Beautiful.
*
W. D. Ehrhart is an ex-Marine sergeant and veteran of the American War in Vietnam. His latest book is Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems, McFarland & Company.
The Longest Night of My Life by W. D. Ehrhart
The Longest Night of My Life
We’d been humping the boonies up by the DMZ
for a couple of weeks. November 1967.
Hard work. And every night a new fighting hole.
And the one-man poncho tent.
This night, we were on the side of a hill.
I didn’t bother to trench my tent. It wasn’t
raining. And the soil farther south had never
needed that. And I was tired.
And fell asleep fast. But I woke up later
to find myself in the midst of a raging river
cascading down the hillside. It was raining.
And the soil up here absorbed nothing.
Raining hard. Cold in November.
Me already utterly soaked. Teeth chattering.
No dry clothes. No place dry. Middle of nowhere.
Sunrise hours away. Five? Maybe six.
*
W. D. Ehrhart is an ex-Marine sergeant and veteran of the American War in Vietnam. His latest book is Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems, McFarland & Company.
God, Guns & Ginny by W. D. Ehrhart
God, Guns & Ginny
Well, of course it was righteous.
Bear any burden, pay any price,
what you could do for your country.
Godless communists, after all.
You may have been only seventeen,
but you’d seen them already
in Hungary, Cuba, Berlin.
Something had to be done,
and someone would have to do it.
There is something about a thatched-roof
hut in the middle of rice fields, burning,
a mortally wounded woman softly
keening, child dead in her arms,
that can’t be blamed on Chairman Mao,
Castro, Lenin, or Das Kapital.
Heavy artillery flattened that home.
Ours. Our guns did that.
Long before I reached my thirteen months,
I discovered I had nothing to cling to
but a girl back home. A young girl.
Still in high school. Watching her friends
go out on dates, having fun, enjoying
all of the things that seniors do
for the last exuberant time together.
She must have agonized for months
before she sent me that final letter.
I hope she’s had a nice life. I mean it.
*
W. D. Ehrhart is an ex-Marine sergeant and veteran of the American War in Vietnam. His latest book is Thank You for Your Service: Collected Poems, McFarland & Company.