Lt. Bernie Ostrow, U.S. Army (1944)

My Father’s Bitterness

The seeds of my own bitterness

were planted one summer night in 1943

in Seattle or somewhere in Texas.

The world was at war; my father on leave

and my mother not wanting to be alone,

but not imagining the company of a child

with its heavy presence of need.

My father went west to Australia

my mother went east to Brooklyn,

each to meet a private challenge,

both to find bitter disappointment.

 

My father!  Set free in the world:

a Jewish boy from the ghetto,

an officer in ninety days,

sailing the far oceans.

“I wanted to stay in Australia”

he once told me.

“But you were born

and I came home.”

I’ve even seen the Red Cross

telegram announcing my birth:

the call to obedience

and the end of dreams.

 

Years later, imagining that it

was this return from freedom

that set him on the path of

bitterness and melancholy,

I asked his sister what she thought

had made him so unhappy.

And she said it was the army

that made him bitter.

But I know better now.

Back in Brooklyn,

it was the lingering taste

of a different life

on his tongue.

 

• a found poem from Enders Island: “on the water”
• What is and what was…
• Darkness always gives way to light…