A commissioned remembrance of "Fighting Al" Johnson, who,
  By way of the Kamikaze, went down to the sea on his ship.

By the Basin: The Northwestern Philippine Sea, April 16, 1945:

"Fighting Al" Johnson, chief machinist's-mate, was killed in action

Aboard the USS Hobson, DMS-26, a fast destroyer-sweeper in mid engagement,
Stove-in by a pilot crazed "Zeke"–– a heavy torpedo, one engine, two-manned

Meteorite of an aircraft during the bloody offshore Battle of Okinawa.
––Back home, his three year old son lived-on to become the sole proprietor of noteworthy

"Hartley's Original Pork Pies", South Main Street, skilled in fashioning,
For the workingman's palate, the best pork pies in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

––A patron, long of Hollywood and Broadway, USA,

Would one day come to proclaim: "I love these little things"!

That would be the once beguiling star of stage and screen, Patricia Neal.

––You'll remember, she's the gal who won the pathos of "Klaatu" (the Emissary) 

Utilizing her understated charms to coax him to submission in order to save the Earth's
Population from eradication by the scowling "Consortium Of Other Planets".

Klaatu will be back.

We didn’t change our ways.

The USS Hobson, DMS-26 afire and broken but afloat and under power,
Continued the fight of her life, holding her valiant dead within the burning of their stations,
Headlong into war's fierce commotion upon the black, Northwestern Philippine Sea.

Epilog:

"Fighting Al" Johnson, killed manning an ack-ack anti aircraft gun port amidships

Was buried at sea.

 Patricia Neal, star of stage and screen came to retire during a fight of her own, residing

On the Isle of Manhattan with occasional stopovers, southend of Fall River, for a dozen
Hartley's Original Pork Pies to travel on route to her beachfront home on the great sea island of

Martha’s Vineyard. The End.

This poem is commissioned by Fighting Al's only son, his namesake, Alan Johnson,
first guy on the corner to own his own car,–– a new, six-cylinder, four-door,
wedgewood-blue, 1959 Ford Custom 300, three gears forward on the column.