Marc Swan
today can take your breath away
by Marc Swan
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Paperback ISBN: 9780692055137
Click here to hear Marc read two poems from the collection!
$14.00 — Ebook ISBN: 9781732940611 (available through your favorite online bookstores)
Marc Swan lives in coastal Maine. Poems recently published or forthcoming in Gargoyle, Chiron Review, Sandy River Review, Crannóg, among others. His fifth collection, all it would take, was published in 2020 by tall-lighthouse (UK).
The Silent Generation
After the war to end all wars
didn’t, there was a second world war
and our country entered it reluctantly
after Pearl Harbor. My father, who never
talked of that war, to me at least, worked
in a plant that made flight simulators
where paint particles entered his lungs.
He was not drafted, but four brothers were
and today in this time of political upheaval
with wars on many fronts I think of that time
and what his brothers thought as they went off
to Europe, the Pacific, points far from home
in a small town in upstate New York.
Was there anger, resentment, uncertainty
or acceptance of that is how things were
and staying alive for an unknown amount
of time in less than exotic locales was the focus?
When they returned home damaged
in unspoken ways, did they talk with my father
of the battles, the deaths, the injuries,
the fear of dying that kept their eyes wide
at night or did they hold it inside and weep
those tears in quiet places as they became
what is now called The Silent Generation.
