The Vibrant Channeled Creator

V-J Day

I was born in 1941

the year the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor

Papa stayed in the Virgin Islands fortifying the coast ‘till I met him

in 1945.

“Are you my Daddy?’

“What is “shell-shocked?’

‘Why did my Mom send me off with her sister?”

“Ws V-J Day really the end of the war?”

“Did PTSD exist in 1945?”

(What came up when I read Michael Ryan’s poem today on the Poetry Almanac…)

When I Was Conceived
by Michael Ryan

It was 1945, and it was May.
White crocus bloomed in St. Louis.
The Germans gave in but the war shoved on,
and my father came home from work that evening
tired and washed his hands
not picturing the black-goggled men
with code names fashioning an atomic bomb.
Maybe he loved his wife that evening.
Maybe after eating she smoothed his jawline
with her palm as he stretched out
on the couch with his head in her lap
while Bob Hope spoofed Hirohito on the radio
and they both laughed. My father sold used cars
at the time, and didn’t like it,
so if he complained maybe she held him
an extra moment in her arms,
the heat in the air pressing between them,
so they turned upstairs early that evening,
arm in arm, without saying anything.