The dark cap is tipped to the back of his head like a macabre halo, perhaps held there by two ears ample enough to suggest a signalman guiding a plane onto the deck of an aircraft carrier. His thick, dark brown hair is swept up and back, with highlights that suggest murky surf crashing onto the wide alabaster beach of his forehead. The brows hang close over narrow eyes, perhaps useful when assaulted by wind and spray. His fine nose is poised above a perfect mouth, inscrutable and delicious. The graceful lines of his symmetrical jaw and chin converge over a throat that is at once manly and vulnerable. The tunic, adorned by a vestigial slash of “fruit salad,” a collar marked by three parallel white lines suggestive of the “no passing zone” of some lonely asphalt highway, the incongruous intrusion of an undershirt, and the unexpected glamour of a satin scarf snaking its way across his sternum seem to remind the casual observer that this bit of bone, gut, and flesh is destined not to be the object of desire but rather the means by which the ambitions of admirals are achieved.
In loving memory of a sailor, scholar, soldier, husband, father, teacher, and lover,
Don L. (“Laurin”) Foxworth, age 18
© December 12, 2012 Lewis J. Thompson, III
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Lewis, this is so beautiful. It makes me regret that I never met him yet in another way feel that I have.
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