for Muse prize it seems more serious poems usually get awards. I started this as part of my WWII _ Uncle Dick project. What do you think? I’m not sure it’s right for a contest.

Looking for Uncle Dick
After the painting “One” by Ciel Skal

From water he came, and to water he returned.
For twenty-three years, he was here.
Then there. Then gone.

Artist, mapmaker, photographer.
Ambidextrous genius, prankster.
Brother to two sisters, one older, one younger.

A jester and tease, a student, and soldier.
A gunner with a camera, shooting war through a lens
to record what he might one day wish to forget.

Then silence. Missing in action.

My grandparents wept enough tears to lift the Pacific,
the ocean that swallowed him. His hands gripped
a machine gun, yet pressed the camera shudder with tenderness.

In this painting, the ink bleeds black through water,
the way death spread across the Pacific,
one downed plane at a time.

My uncle flew low over Japan in a B-29.
Last mission - signal lost.
Body never found.

He belongs to the ages now, leaving questions adrift.
Did the plane fail? Was it shot from the sky?
The sea holds his silence.

I dive into family history. Gather fragments
of one who will never age, spared
the wreckage of remembering.

We carry the burden of not knowing.