Reports of a Japanese surface presence have brought them
speeding
into Savo Sound,
false reports that will not be true for days.
So now at evening the fleet drops anchor, the crews relax,
the heat drifts west toward the war in Africa.
On the deck of the tender Tangier
a sailor focuses a camera on a foreground of water,
the cruiser Atlanta, and far back against the jungles of Savo,
the hulks of Task Group 66.4.
A few on the cruiser notice him, but you cannot tell it
from their faces, too many shadows, too long a stretch
of grainy water. Still,
figures can be seen loafing on the bow, leaning
from the bridge, the machine gun platforms, even a sailor
clowning on a gun turret, barrel straight up between his
legs.
And behind the shadow draped like armor across that stern,
my father is standing with the gunners
under turret number six, a shadow
in a wide cluster of shadows waving toward the Tangier.
Knowing their future, I imagine
some pulse in the nerves, primitive as radar, throbbing,
and exactly what the hand is saying, even he does not
know.
He is only standing where the living and the dead
lean against the rail,
unsure who is who, and wave across the sound
toward the camera, toward us, for all of the reasons anyone
waves.
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