Dad of Marine fighting in Iraq waxes poetic

Just about the last thing that a newspaper writer wants to hear on the other end of the phone line is a guy saying, "I'd like to read you a poem I wrote."

That is, unless the caller happens to be someone like Norm Nelson, a one-time Marine, one-time Los Angeles cop and one-time bull rider whose youngest son, Eric, is serving his third tour of duty with the Marines in Iraq.

His third.

While the rest of us have the luxury of fretting over job security and mortgage payments (and pretending that there are not two wars going on), troops and their families must live with the distance and the danger, the anxiety, the longing.

And they must deal with it day in and day out.

So if Norm Nelson calls and wants to read me his grocery list, I'm going to listen.

Last year at this time, The Republic published a poem that Nelson, who lives in Prescott, wrote to the Letters to the Editor section. It had to do with troops mourning fallen comrades and was called "Boots in the Ground."

"I wrote that one because there was a picture in the paper of a Marine kneeling at a memorial service for other Marines," Nelson told me. "The boots of the fallen are used in those services and this Marine was holding on to them, crying. The picture really got to me because, at the time, my son was on his second deployment."

An older son served in the first Gulf War.

"I kind of wish we had taken care of things then," Nelson said. "As it is, my son in Iraq has three guys in his squad who are on their fifth deployment. Can you imagine? I wonder sometimes if most of us back here even think about them anymore. After all these years, it's sort of like we've lost interest."

The poem that Nelson wanted me to listen to was called Proof of Life. It has to do with the long days of gnawing concern and uncertainty with which family members must deal while waiting to hear from a loved one in the war zone.

It goes:

It's been a long time since the telephone rang,/ but only a mother and father would understand that certain twang./ It never rings in the midday/ or any other time convenient to say./ No, it's late at night or the early morn,/ whenever it rings it's never the norm./ It's a son or daughter calling from Iraq./ I always worry whose got their back./ You see the war has changed and the safe places are gone./ It's just a phone, a loved one's voice and a prayer to hang on./ The waiting is left to a husband and wife,/ a mother and father who need proof of life.

Norm's son has lost friends in the war. He worries that Eric might take chances that he shouldn't. He worries about how he will do when he eventually leaves the service. Eric has a son of his own. Nelson worries about him, too. He worries about a lot of things. As would any father in his situation.

The rhyming verses that he writes are a kind of therapy. They help him deal with things. He'd like to believe that they might help the rest of us to think about the soldiers overseas and their families. It would be Nelson's special version of poetic justice.

I figure that he and all of the family members like him have earned it, as have their loved ones in the military. Nelson proved as much in another poem, one he wrote before Eric left for his third deployment.

It begins:

A tear slowly rolled down my face as I said goodbye to my son./ Far away there is a war that's still waiting to be won./ My grandson holds tightly to his father's hand/ and says slowly, "Papa will this war be over before I'm a man?"
AZCentral