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The Soldier Bard

Posted April 29, 2008

It was an unexpected transfer that took place Sunday morning as I packed the car to head back to Greenville after a weekend back in Conway with the family. I'd traveled alone, as we have so much to get done at home that Jonathan wanted to try and make a dent in his Honey-do list while I was at the beach throwing my brother's intended a bridal shower.

As I headed for the car, Dad said "Hold on, I have something I want to give you," and he bolted out the door to head for the shed on the back of the property.

My Uncle Rick passed away in January of 2006, and with his passing came a flood of his belongings - all musty, carefully organized memories of him and his father before him. I suspect that what dad was giving me came from Rick's stash of family history treasures, but I'm not sure. All I know is it is something amazing.

The folder contained poetry written by my grandfather, one Richard Cecil Powell, Sr. I never met him, as he died in September of 1971...some 13 years before I was born. But trust me when I say...we've met.

He was a soldier during WWII, a poet laureate that never got his rightful appointment, and a family man who labored under intense home sickness and loneliness while he was in Europe. He was among the many brave men who stepped on the reddened sands that infamous morning of June 6, 1944. Between the loneliness and the fighting, he found himself with a pencil in hand, jotting lyrical beauty on a borrowed pad of paper, deciphering his own creations by candlelight.

The people - men, especially - in my family don't seem to change much. Maybe our genes are really thick and immutable, like our (also hereditary) tempers. Maybe a little bit of each passing generation is reborn in the form of a younger spit-fire. Whatever the case, I know that I am my grandfather's daughter after reading his work. As a poet myself, I saw so many parallels in his writing that the hair on the back of my neck stood up a few times. I could've penned the very response to some of his work, to be honest.

Some pieces are typed, with handwritten corrections he later made. Some are jotted on the spur of the moment in a crooked cursive script. But in the jagged yellow pages, my grandfather's long-gone person waxes lyrical about missing his wife, losing her firstborn little girl during the war, being intensely afraid of the fighting, and the sound of chanting GIs haunting him at every turn. The works are the corollary of something bigger than me, bigger than this man, and bigger than any story I can tell for him. He speaks in simple, sometimes misspelled words, and the tale he tells couldn't possibly need more adornment than the honor with which he tells it.

I'll be honest to say that parts of the poems - in particular, one speaking about a little girl who falls into a body of water - seemed to pull a gasp and then a sob from me. It was a response you don't volunteer...it just sort of finds its way out. The poem was an obvious address of the loss of my father's oldest sister when she was just a toddler - written by a man who was in a situation where he probably couldn't even fully deal with the loss.

Suffice it to say that Sunday night was one of those nights. Like the night my father showed me the big, green Rubbermaid container full of newspapers from decades past.

In my hand, I was holding history, something much bigger than I can comprehend: front page declarations, narrations on a dead president (Kennedy), on distant battles (WWII, D-Day, the H-Bomb), and humble goodbyes (grandad's obituary, the announcement of dad's appointment at West Point). There was even the last paper my grandfather ever read...and therein lay a truly profound thing. It wasn't any important news, really - nothing remarkable, at least. But it was the story of his last day, told in bylines and fuzzy photographs. It was pre-digital, pre-perfection, pre-death, and all told under what I assume to be a good cup of coffee.

At least, if I know anything about the man, there was good coffee to be had.

One of these days, I hope I can tell a story the way he probably didn't even mean to.

Until then, this will have to do.