Indoctrination
November ’45, Gulfport, Mississippi
Dress Blues “A” for a Sunday liberty
Heart loose for hunting on my lonesome own
Find some kind of people not in uniform
A quiet thrill stirs in me, the only sailor boy on hand,
Never so far from home, and yet my native land
The main street is empty, the Lord’s Day of rest
I’m the only living thing except the wind north by west
The shuttered stores, an abstract form, theatrical, stark
One sidewalk warm in the sunshine, the opposite chilly dark
One last block, now the pavement’s all done
So I come about keeping warm in the sun
Don’t find myself a coffee or some home-cooking kind of place
I’ll just flag down a Greyhound and dog it back to the base
Now, at last, to greet me so I won’t want to leave,
Someone appears from the dark side and touches my sleeve
“Son,” he calls me, low. I stop and turn again.
“Yes, sir,” I greet. He’s a middle kind of man
Neither young nor old, nor big nor small
Might have been my father, but not familiar at all.
“You are strange here, I know. You don’t know our ways.
So it’s best I teach you, son: white folks walk in the shade.”
I know no way to thank him. He nods, “You understand.”
And I can not say how cold it is in this dark and sunny land.