She Came in Handy & Molly Marine

The Poetry Bus has left the Farm, driven by the able Weaver. As I've been away for the holiday, I am a bit late at the stop, but I hope I can persuade her to stop long enough for Molly and me to hop aboard.

The challenge was to write something about a person or in the voice of that person; I've done both, but I must admit that I did so some while ago. If you've read before, please don't feel compelled to comment.

For those who haven't read these, let me explain the impetus for the poems. My son took a photo of a gravestone in a military cemetery. The stone is for a female marine from the WWII era. On her stone, it says (I kid you not), "SHE CAME IN HANDY."

I'll say. Sheesh.

She Came In Handy

When she signed up in ‘43

She got no special name,

But wore the eagle and the globe

And anchor all the same.

She trained with guns and aeroplanes

And learned to march just dandy,

But it was keeping things in check

She really came in handy.

They said she freed a man to fight

So he could win the war;

At home she did the vital jobs

That he had done before.

She typed the Captain’s letters up

And filed his work away,

She kept a calendar for him

And organized his day.

She felt great fear she couldn’t show

About the plans they made

To drop a bomb to end the war--

At least that’s what she prayed.

She gave her days to Uncle Sam

And when the war was done,

She shook their hands and said goodbye

And felt life had begun.

She married Jack and had three kids,

And when the kids were grown,

She helped by taking on the books

At the station that they owned.

She lived a life of sacrifice,

Blessed others by the giving,

And when she passed short years ago

She left a life worth living.

Upon her grave they set the stone

That told the world a story

Of one good life lived out in time

Without a thought for glory.

In words so sweet and measured out

Like little bits of candy

That summed her worth for all to see,

They said, “She came in handy.”

Molly Marine

Me? Bothered by a stone?

Why, child, there’s a ring to it—

rhymes with dandy, and I was that,

in that uniform I wore.

They told us not to fraternize,

but I could have. I’d march by those men,

and I knew the power of my hips!

Never used it, though.

I was a good girl, a good Marine.

Wore the eagle, globe and anchor.

Did my job for God and Uncle Sam,

in my own way.

I freed a man to fight, they said.

He went to die, and I went to work.

Spent my time typing up the war

and praying they’d not drop that bomb.

But they did.

That might have been the happiest

and the saddest day of my life,

Cause then it was done.

I traded a salute and Semper Fi

for an apron and a big belly –

three younguns and fifty-three good years

with one man before it was over.

But you know, once a Marine,

always a Marine, and I never

felt so proud in all my life as the day

they planted me here with the rest.

Seventy-nine years doing

for others what I could, and I reckon

I earned the way they summed my life.

It’s no insult, child: I came in handy.