The leaves are falling
On your grave.
And I’m not there today
To say goodbye.
Instead, I’ll buy
Two drinks, one for you
Instead, I’ll raise my glass
and cry.
Instead, I’ll visit that wall
Next summer
And cry.
Vitals
He’d die,
Accompanied
By his rifle,
Steeped in sweat.
Not disinfectant.
The oximeter, low.
No breath is free.
Each is enlisted.
They wake him
To take vitals.
A prisoner of war,
His blood let,
Not to a lab,
To madder root.
It was lunacy.
Men cut
Easier’n cane
They raised.
Lashed- eyes,
And back.
In between,
He waited
For a bullet
To the head.
Not a tumor.
A prison,
The Senate.
Hospitals.
Battle-brought
Nearly home.
Missing Inaction
I. Vietnam
“No church today, colonel.”
Said the man who rowed
Him across the river.
An explosion, deafening,
Even to an Infantryman.
Clapboard, pews aflame.
Of 4 years of combat,
This is the only story
My grandfather told.
One man,
One sentence,
Saved his life.
He walked with God
And water buffalo,
And the Vietnamese.
He spoke 6 tongues.
And had many names.
Grandfather. Dad. Colonel.
II. Vietnam, Basic
A colonel’s 2nd deployment…
His daughters dreamed
he’d be killed in action.
But the colonel went,
like soldiers before him,
kissed the states goodbye.
He refused bad orders,
saving most of his unit,
but he was killed.
Grandpa in tears.
Why did I tell him?
I said I was sorry.
He said, “We were
in basic together.
I didn’t know.”
His friend had died
Half a world away,
Half a century ago.
III. Japan
Grandpa sent his brother
In the Navy, a note,
A 1948 Japanese yen.
Ripped in half. Written.
The names of six men,
As lost as the other half.
Officers? Operatives?
Men’s faces blur. Time.
Saki-smoke-laughter.
No one knows where,
Why it was sent,
or who the men were.
Important enough
To write, to save
for 60 years.
IV. Home
These men were.
Missing inaction.
Solid but never still.
We cannot pretend
cannot convince me
one doesn’t matter.
One sentence.
One man lost.
One man saved.
When the border is gone.
And the mission is over,
Enemies, tremors defeated,
It’s what they built.
Third culture kids.
Bridges and bonds.
I am not a soldier
It’s not my story.
But nor am I separate.