By Ronnie Robertson (Ships at Night _MG_7756) [<a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0">CC BY-SA 2.0</a>] via Wikimedia Commons

No surprises on my watch!

Midwatch

• Steaming as before, independently
• Which is to say alone
• On a black sea with white accents
• I am responsible for the souls
• Asleep while I keep watch
• Scanning the horizon for running lights
• Scanning the radar screen for contacts
• That might not be displaying lights
• No surprises on my watch! But
• There are always things you don’t know
• That you don’t know.
• Above there are eternal stars
• Below are myriads of sea creatures
• Neither pays the slightest attention
• To my concerns.

Nirvana

• something strange is happening to me
• I seem to have reached that sacred spot
• sought by the legions who meditate
• that place where the mind is blank of thought
• but my place is like a city street
• in the bad part of town at 2 AM
• and the streetlights are out
• my coat is too thin to warm me
• and my eyes can’t penetrate the darkness
• and the only sound I can hear
• is the wordless howling of the wind
• blowing dust and discards of human life
• all around me, standing there, utterly alone.

Pillars of Creation

• If body and spirit
• Could be made
• To survive the force
• Needed to escape

• If light years could
• Collapse into miles

• I would want my journey
• To end in the
• Pillars of Creation

• My stuff becoming part
• Of a star, continuing
• An eternal cycle.

David Molnar was born and raised in the coal mining town of Kulpmont, PA. Immediately upon graduating high school, he enlisted in the Navy, which for boys who could not afford college was a primary means of escaping working in the coal mines. Soon after starting his service, he earned a full scholarship to Purdue University where he received a degree in Electrical Engineering and a commission as an Ensign. He served thirty years in the Navy, including service patrolling the coast of Vietnam as a flight crewmember, service aboard a guided missile destroyer in the Gulf of Tonkin, and service in-country Vietnam as a Naval Advisor. David retired as a Captain after thirty years of service, his last two tours of duty being commanding officer of San Diego-area shore commands. He is married to Bobette nee Densborn, and has three sons and eight grandchildren.