A Twenty-Year Call for Hally Boy

            (Luzon, World War II, 1945)

Hally Boy where are you

Walking the earth I see you everywhere

And yet I cannot find you.

I call out to you

Hally Boy come home

Sounds have a way of reaching into any thing

If they belong.

You must feel my old call come live again

Even if you and I

And the others who had or private signs

Of claps and calls are twenty years gone

In our own ways.

The whole number nine that is one needs you

To round it out of brokenness.

Come home

Eat and laugh with us

Reel in from sights and sounds and

Bright remembrances and

Mould into your live place

From whatever and wherever you are.

It is not enough Hally Boy

To remember you

Come home

                                    Lois Langland, Lines of Rivers