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Edward Harkness: My Father Meets Margaret Bourke-White 
It happens aboard a troop ship crossing the Atlantic. He has just turned nineteen, a newly trained B-17 gunner. She is twice his age, a photographer for Life magazine, striking, he’d recall, in her leather flight jacket when they meet on deck one clear night, the moon just risen, its blue road undulant in the ship’s wake. Good evening, young man, she says. Cigarette? He’s seen her in news reels. No thank you, ma’am. She pulls out a pack of Camels. Your first crossing, I gather. I’m from Bremerton, he tells her. Uh huh. Well, prepare yourself, my young friend. The Gulf of Naples is on fire, full of sunken ships, bombed out buildings. He studies the glow of her cigarette. She is taller than he by half a foot. They lean on the rail, her arm against his in its tan GI-issue sleeve. We’ll see Gibraltar at dawn, she says. Portside. Moonlight silvers her hair. He finds a Hershey bar in his breast pocket, offers her a piece. She flicks her cigarette into the dark, takes the chocolate and says, Thanks, kiddo. Later, she will show the world Buchenwald survivors, Gandhi at his spinning wheel, anti-apartheid protestors risking death. Now, she stands by my father, neither one ready for what is to come, neither one aware that this night is a war souvenir, one my father will keep well-hidden, vivid as the time he knew he’d die, his bomber lost in fog over the Alps, more intense than the blue Adriatic he would cross three dozen times from his base in Foggia. Crammed inside his glass ball in the plane’s belly, he’d count bombs released from the bay doors, track them as they tumbled dream-like toward Vienna, Hamburg, Berlin. People died screaming, he knew, inside those tiny puffs of smoke. He’d recall that night with Bourke-White, the silver of her hair, sharing his chocolate bar on the portside deck. At sunrise, just as she had said, their arms touching on the railing, they watch the Rock of Gibraltar come into view.
Copyright 2022 Ed Harkness
The Law of the Unforeseen, Edward Harkness’ third full-length collection of poems (released September 2018) is available at Pleasure Boat Studio. He lives with his wife, Linda, in Shoreline, Washington.
Vox Populi 
Gorgeous poem, Ed. And thanks to Vox Populi for running it.
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Thanks, Lex. It is a gorgeous poem.
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Thank you, Lex.
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“the moon just risen,
its blue road undulant in the ship’s wake….” and other truly original and compelling images images. Beautiful narrative.
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Thanks, Laure-Anne. I like Edward’s well-crafted verses. They weave moving tales out of small moments.
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Thank you, Loran.
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A joy to read. Once wrote an ekphrastic poem on Bourke-White’s photographs of women in WWII.
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Thanks, John.
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Thank you, John. I’d like to see your ekphrastic poem.
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Here’s the poem, a haibun:
The Shift of Roles
—Margaret Bourke-White’s photographs of women
When World War II dragged men to the battlefields, women became welders, crane operators, oilers, grinders, coil tapers, foundry helpers, and shippers, doing whatever they could and earning same wages as men. When the War ended, they changed into wives, sisters, mothers, and homebodies. Their roles shifted without notice from their men.
It’s a boy!
the husband utters in joy
outside the labor room
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thanks, John!
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I like this, John, in particular the subtle irony of the last three lines and the comment the poem makes about the perpetual locked-in role of women once their usefulness in typically male roles ends.
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