The sweet grass was soft
in the dark campground
half an hour’s moonless
walk beyond Dachau.
I slept in my thrift shop
Hungarian cotton raincoat.
It was warm enough
for the mid summer night.
The crook of my arm served
as my pillow. Some kind
early rising campers
gave me a cup of coffee.
Seven years later when
I was fomenting revolution
in LA, I slept on the floor
of a Guatemalan millworker
at Bethlehem Steel
in Vernon, California.
A rolled up field coat
was my pillow this time.
Fortty years after that,
I was taking my wife’s ashes
to Bangkok and got stuck
at the Hong Kong airport
when pro-democracy
demonstrators shut down
the airport overnight.
I wriggled into a spot under
a row of seats and used my
knapsack with the special
container of her ashes inside
to nap for a few restless hours.
I did not dream of a ladder
that reached up to heaven
full of angels and with God
at the top extending his love.
I know what a father’s love
feels like though. My Dad
showed me how to make a bed
and a pillow with sprigs of
bear clover and oak leaves
under a tarp next a trout creek.
We stretched our our Army
surplus mummy bags and
gazed up at the stars, happy
with the trout that he had taught
me how to catch that day and
cook in a skillet over a campfire.
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