Though I wouldn’t mind supporting the local
carrier pigeon racing club or youth sports or
the Urban League, I don’t buy fireworks.

The pop and snap and sizzle startle me—
always have—which makes me like the dogs
who prefer to hide when all the boom-booms

commence. And yet, what I’d give to see my
thirty-something father filling a silvery garbage can
with water and hauling it to the street,

just in case, keeping the hose nearby, too,
while sidelining another empty can for
spent sparklers and piccolo petes

and other screamers that he would
set alight as we kids watched from
a respectful distance (me with my fingers

plugging my ears). I loved to see him
hold a Roman candle aloft like the Statue
of Liberty, its brilliant flame highlighting

his goofy smile. Firework after firework
until the end of the show when he would
distribute slender sparklers—as many

as we wanted—to any kid who’d wander by,
and watch us carve our cursive names into
the night over and over until the little wands

poofed out and we tossed them into
the can with all the other dead soldiers,
as my father called them. Only years later

did I realize that he, as a young infantryman
in Korea, certainly knew soldiers who
died, was almost one himself, as

the purple heart in his top dresser
drawer—the one he never talked about—
attested, proving beyond a doubt

his loyalty to the land of the free,
the home of the brave.