I. First Light
My boys, haggard and dazed
slept instantly in their boots
on the wooden floor of an abandoned hooch
reeking of dried urine and crusted vomit,
canteens empty, water truck late
In the universal search for water
mine was for purifying my mouth,
rank with old earth, insect repellent,
fear and spite in the early morning
Toothbrush too dry for its mission,
I knew where to steal it
My nasty little secret whispered to me:
“It’s in the dusty brown five gallon cans
hidden behind the officer’s tent”
The nasty little secret whispered to me:
“Steal it, corporal, in your tin cup
It belongs to you
It comes out of your ration”
Not fifty feet out,
in the seconds it takes for a nightmare
to scatter in fragments throughout later years,
the jet engine roar of the rocket
shook and rattled the tin roofs
II. Dust Cloud
I had taught my boys:
Do not light up joints on ambush patrols
Suck your thumb, play with yourself,
anything, but do not smoke or toke
Victor Charlie can smell you
Do let him spot your match
I taught them:
Victor Charlie does not come by invitation
He will come when you nod to sleep
His rockets, her AK-47’s, his RPGs,
will come whenever she, whenever he
chooses to nail your ass to the moon
I taught them from past mistakes,
mistakes a young soldier makes
because he is tired and reckless
and thinking of women:
Do not run for a bunker
when Victor Charlie sends mama-san to visit
Hit the dirt for crying out loud;
give yourself half a chance
But no, too young, too terrified to listen,
my boys bolted out of their inner darknesses,
clawed the tire marred trek of the road
for the bunker’s maw,
slid right into their dying moment
as a rookie slides into home plate,
all arms and legs
in the scruff of jungle fatigues
III. Sirens
The explosion rolled me,
caked the crud and crap of war
into my eyeballs, the holes of my ears,
into the crevices of my teeth
into the thickness of my tongue
Its contusion blocked my hearing,
but for the screams
of the boys of my platoon:
“Mama! Mommie! Nana! Daddy!
Karen! Angie! Pam! Jeanie!”
but for my own screams crawling
through bodies no more familiar
than road kill
“No! No! No!” I screamed,
my M-16 pointed at nothing
No! Not my boys
No, not them
No!
IV. Flashbacks
In later years an aging platoon leader
heading to his last LZ,
thinks on a park bench
He thinks to himself,
for no one else will ever get it,
will ever know
He thinks
looking for water
can be as easy as:
a fountain in a grade school hall;
a kitchen sink;
following a divining rod in a Colorado meadow;
a journey of beauty along a cascade
ending in a pool of smoothness;
a dry throat gulping cool water
drawn from under a gushing farm pump
the summer before becoming a man;
the rainstorm puddle on a sunken sidewalk
along a street of elms
a small boy dashes through;
the shallows of an ocean
where a platoon leader in his later years
can soothe his burned and spotted skull,
can find water that cannot be hidden
in five gallon cans
along coral as dead as his heart