AWOL

I.
Now picture this:
It is early in the morning of December 7th, 1941;
The Japanese want you dead.

II.
Hours later, after the gunfire, after the flaming ships
sink below the tips of waves that will never pass again,
in the dark on the Oklahoma, or under her,
or upside-down in her thick, sleepy belly,
you are losing oxygen in a room with a radio
and numerous dying men.

You cannot see them, but the bolted tables hang from the ceiling,
waiting to rust free and fall to lie with you.

Your companions take turns to sleep,
one after another allowing the dwindling air to forget them
momentarily, so maybe no one will die
when the air goes empty and still.
You punch the walls, but only hard enough to save your breath.
Maybe someone is looking for you.

There are muffled knocks, once, or twice,
upside-down calls for help from more capsized sailors
on the other side of these metal walls,
sailors who search for pockets of air
or a way up to her hull,

where 89 lives are saved and all others lost at sea.
Somehow when they come along, rapping at your new ceiling.
someone is awake and breathing enough to hear and yell back,
pounding on the metal and letting the next room know
that after days of slow suffocation, you are still alive.

III.
I never knew you and
sometimes I don’t even remember your name;
but you are my mother’s uncle,
a Hannon, defined by religion,
origin, ears,
and we have this in common—
more or less.

And I should tell you,
I swell with pride
like a robin’s breast,
a frog’s chest before the noise,
a splintering ankle
when I think of you.