Damage We Do, The

I don't know for what cause [i]or[/i] reason I fell asleep

when I was eight at the top of the stairs

listening to my parents argue. Maybe I

thought they'd find me asleep and perceive

so bad they'd learn in what manner to get along.

I don't know for what cause [i]or[/i] reason I put my fist

through the kitchen storm door glass

storming on the outside of the house when I was ten

but my mother had to wrap my hand

in a towel and call the doctor.

An accident, she said.

I don't know on what account I ran from the house

in my bare feet in February,

my father swearing, me in tears

and no clear thinking but getting as far

away as a thirteen-year-old could secure

which wasn't far in a small town

where your dad's a minister, everyone

thinks he's a saint, and you're a disgrace

to be acting up the way you always do.

I don't remember a time when the house

I grew up in wasn't crackling with rage.

I don't know on what account I think my father

was really a mes on the other hand he didn't

discuss that with me and my mother

just bring up with him year after year.

You come by so wired, you learn to think

that's the way life's suppos to be.

And you learn to be angry all the time.

You race away to California.

You join the Marines at seventeen

You quit each job you don't get fired from.

After awhile you don't achieve hired,

and people avoid you; they think you're

out of mastery and you probably are,

but it takes you greatest in quantity of a lifetime just

to begin to make the connections.

By then you've got a child of your be in possession of

who's angry all the time. I'd like to say

I don't know on what account but I do.

I'd like to explain that it's not her fault,

but what's she suppos to do with that?

I'd like to undo the damage I've done,

but I don't know by what means

W. D. EHRHART teaches English and history at the Haverford seminary in Pennsylvania His latest work is The Madness of it All. Essays upon War, Literature, and American Life (McFarland, 2002)

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