Life of a Military Child
Every two or three years they appeared—
three by three cubes of cardboard
labeled Allied or Mayflower Van Lines.
One box for clothes: winter boots, coats
at the bottom, seersucker dresses on top.
The other box for books, toys and games—
only as many as the box would allow,
some always abandoned, left behind.
The afternoon of packing—an agony—
slow choices of want, grief and loss—
will I again play this game? Is it worth
three favorite books, read again and again
until they’ve become well-loved kin?
And never room to pack any friends.
Ft Ord Family Housing, Decommissioned 1994
Wives fight the battles of milk or new shoes,
of rusty blue Plymouths that shimmy at forty
and clank like a tank when they brake.
Alone, they imagine a knock on the door
and a chaplain with his hat under his arm.
Sometimes they pace with a baby who screams
and try not to think—nightmare thought—
that a pillow pushed hard to Baby’s face
might give her some sleep.
Wives—often lonely, sometimes relieved
that her soldier deployed, too far away,
for anger and stripes of bruised flesh. So many
new towns and houses no one ever loved—
mud-colored blocks in strict rows, clothes lines of diapers
and sheets, gritty from sandy, medicinal wind.
Eucalyptus and sagebrush—in clumps, foot-broken
paths worn by battalions of children—born with a faint
khaki stain like a uniform just under the skin
taught to stand at attention, suck in, and say Sir
as they learn the ranks and ropes of new schools,
new friends with each move—friends in the troops
because townies are rookies who can’t understand
that buddies from foxholes hang tough together
and never look back.
Catharine Clark-Sayles is a retired geriatrician living in Northern California. Her father was a career Air Force officer, and she lived the life of a military kid. An Army scholarship paid for medical school so she became an Army doctor and served at the Army hospital in San Francisco. She began writing poetry at forty, completed an MFA in poetry and narrative medicine at Dominican University of California at 66. She has published four poetry collections: One Breath and Lifeboat by Tebot Bach Press, Brats (a chap book about military childhood) from Finishing Line Press and The Telling, The Listening from Saint Julian Press.
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