Scrapes, cuts, brush burns. Any injury

that broke the skin, he would be called

into service. In charge of medical supplies

at a hospital in the Battle of the Bulge,

he learned “the right way” to treat a wound.

Wash thoroughly with soap and warm water,

pick out shrapnel, dirt, and gravel with sterile

tweezers, rinse with rubbing alcohol, daub

with Merthiolate, orange like its cousin

Mercurochrome, making sure it penetrated

to every nook and crevice. When I fell off

my bicycle and badly scraped my knee, Mother

had to hold me down as I kicked, screamed,

as Dad tried to clean and treat it. Wound care

moved on. Doctors discovered that alcohol

seared skin takes longer to knit, inventing

medicines that didn’t hurt, much less stain.

To his death, Dad painted his own cuts

with the liquid from a little brown bottle

drugstores no longer stocked, believing

“to make it better,” it had to hurt. Not once

did he talk about the wounded soldiers

he must have seen, their screams, the worry

in those makeshift field hospitals that

infection would set in. The teacher who

dreamed of becoming a doctor doctored

his own children’s scrapes as if they were

wartime injuries, and their lives at stake.