for Captain William I. McGowan, USN (1916 - 1983)

You may be right to hiss, maybe even boo Father Earth.
He was a real son of a son of a distant sun.
How did the Earth Mother become a single parent?
Some people wonder what happened to Father Earth
Dear old Dad, the Sky God, what was his name?
Is he up in that great cocktail lounge in the sky,
Kickin’ it in a 6 martini orbit?
Nobody remembers that much about Father Earth.
He never talked much. Did he have a woman on the side?
Had he already shot his load somewhere else?
Or was he just the strong silent type,
Brutalized by his experience of being caught up in the war
Between the ancestor spirits, the Norse Gods, and Yahweh?
Respect him? Oh, we respected the hell out of him.
But if we ever went too far in asking him questions,
The response we could count on was a stony silence
Or else “Go ask your mother...”
We wanted to live out his dreams, we loved him so,
But he would rarely tell us what his dreams were.
Why did Father Earth have to cut out so soon,
Before we really had a chance to get to know him?
We have only the foggiest notion of him today.
It’s like he went out for cigarettes and never came back.
If he left us something, it must be with the Earth Mother.
Dear old Dad, the Sky God, what was his name?

©1991, Whitman McGowan

Whitman McGowan is the author of a series of chapbooks, The Book, Pith and Vinaigrette, Big Petits-Fours, I Know the Aliens Have Come & Ghost Worker; one full-length collection, Contents May Have Shifted; and the poet/performer/producer of the CDs, Po Fu & Caught in the Act. His latest release is the expanded DVD version of his poetry video, White Folks Was Wild Once, Too.

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