someday.
Adriana Caselotti as Snow White
introduced a lot of WW2 kids
to nostalgia for the future.
We lived in a world of menace
Where, most of our daddies
were away fighting for our future.
Our mothers nurtured in us
a complex hope that our daddies
would return safe and happy
yet it was during that time that
they got a taste of freedom
that might be illicit: a matriarchy
that might be threatened
by Daddy’s return.
Whether we felt that or not
the future return of Daddy
was a cause of future nostalgia
but after he returned
if he did it was a cause of
great nostalgia for the past
because mostly Daddy had a tension
that made his shoulders tight
made him tired, silent, moody
a journey through that kind of hell
can wreak that kind of change
The silence of returned men
is a promise that someday
some of that war might leak out
might leak out through
a weepy eye a diseased liver
a fist a pen a typewriter
even by proxy a child’s fist or gun
someday.
