Goodman Blodgett.

Bishop, James Gleason

 Goodman Blodgett
    Hot summer morning. I shot
   baskets at the playground, beside
   the Blodgett's house, where, trying
   to rescue ourselves from ourselves,
   we'd fling fistfuls of gravel onto his roof,
   listen to it rattle like rain, then run
   as the old man burst out to swear at us.
   Blodgett walked with a limp, had a scar
   we never saw on his thigh. He'd rescued
   a buddy at Anzio. The man was drowning
   in an inch of ocean. Old man Blodgett--but
   he must've been young man Blodgett then--
   dragged his buddy from the sea. On the beach,
   got shot through the thigh. Blood slicked
   his leg with each step. His buddy bled out
   before Blodgett could find the medic.
   I don't think he had buddies after the war.
   Not Mrs. Blodgett. We'd hear their words
   burst out of the house, rattle on the roof, then
   die out early, like their cigarettes, their lights.
   Blodgett shot himself the year I graduated.
   Cleaning his gun, said the paper, said his wife.
   Could've been true, for all we knew. Such a sour
   life, no one questioned why he'd want it to end.
   And no one gave a glance of a thought to our
   shot, how we turned that lush village
   ugly for him with a fistful of gravel.
   We need so many rescues. 

LIEUTENANT COLONEL JAMES GLEASON BISHOP'S work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Connecticut Review, North American Review, Smithsonian, Yankee, The Boston Globe, and Christianity and Literature. His poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He is an assistant professor of English at the United States Air Force Academy.