Navigator

by Peter Schmitt

A double string of pearls is how my father
described the runway lights his crew searched for
returning at night over the water
from combat zones in the Second World War,
the Florida coast under blackout orders
to thwart the German subs lurking offshore,
torpedoes striking the merchant ships afire,
pilots helpless to stop it from the air.

I will not perish without my bearings.
My father served that I might someday be spared.
Still, tonight across a noisy, crowded floor
where so many to me seem unfamiliar,
when I see the necklace I know is yours,
then glancing my way, your face, I’m home, safe, here.

---

Peter Schmitt is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Goodbye, Apostrophe, from Regal House. He has also edited and written an introduction for his late father's Pan Am Ferry Tales: A World War II Memoir (McFarland, 2022). The poems published in this issue were inspired by passages from that memoir.