Eight year old boys
expected to play quietly after school
play with words.
Is whispering into dad’s ham radio quiet?
Are the jingles made by the dog’s tags his noises?
Unoccupied, a boy’s hands become jets
warring for the airspace over the coffee table.
The right hand launches an air to air missile.
The left throttles back, barrel roles, but the evasion fails.
The missile and the left hand explode palm up
fingers out stiff and into the ocean.
The crash wakes his father
sleeping through the day
after working graveyard making steel
at a mill built during WWII.
Far enough from the ocean that Japanese carrier
planes would never reach it.
Naked, raging, he follows the boy who goes out the back door
on his way he sees his radio on, grabs a strip of lose antenna wire.
The boy's mom was quick. She catches the boy
spanks him hard enough to convince
the steelworker not to beat him with a wire.
The weekend before was a special sunrise service
on the beach. The boy’s baptism.
Dull waves rolled onto the sand.
The continuous muffled pounding sounds
were nearly drowned out
by an amplified preacher
telling everyone
there is nothing new under the sun.