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Column 625

Admiral Nimitz

Intro by Ted Kooser
03.12.2017

Near­ly all of us have a sto­ry about once brush­ing up against some­body famous. On their hon­ey­moon my father and moth­er went to New York City where they rode up in a hotel ele­va­tor with the famous striptease artist Gyp­sy Rose Lee. My father talked about those heady few moments for the rest of his life. Here’s Car­ol V. Davis of Los Ange­les, pitch­ing horse­shoes with an admi­ral. This poem is from her most recent book, Because I Can­not Leave This Body, from Tru­man State Uni­ver­si­ty Press. 

Admiral Nimitz

Every day in summer I'd cross the border;
he'd nod, pick up the horseshoes,
hand me one, triple the size
of my palm, and say, You first. We'd play
away the afternoon. Few words
punctuated the clank of horseshoe
against stake, until the fog rolled in
and I'd retrace my steps home.
I was five or six; he, white haired,
however old that meant.

One evening my father sat me down,
spoke in the exaggerated tone
adults adapt for children, asked
if I knew who he was.
Admiral Nimitz, of course, though
I knew nothing of his command
of the Pacific Fleet and was less impressed
than if he'd landed a horseshoe.

He was a calm man, a useful attribute
for sending young men to their deaths.
The only time I saw him upset,
raccoons had invaded from their hideouts
in the hills, attacked the goldfish in his pond,
leaving muddy footprints as they escaped.
As far as I knew, this was his only defeat.

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We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2016 by Carol V. Davis, “Admiral Nimitz,” from Because I Cannot Leave This Body, (Truman State University Press, 2017). Poem reprinted by permission of Carol V. Davis and the publisher. Poem first appeared in Atlanta Review, (Vol. XXII, no.2, Spring/Summer 2016). Introduction copyright © 2024 by The Poetry Foundation.