The poem for today’s Wordsmith Wednesday came out of a real experience, but with embellishment, of course, to certain things, as such as is with poetry.

CHK-6645

“Who’ll stop the rain?”
– CCR

She couldn’t bring herself to climb into the Chinook
at the air show, she said, because it reminded her
of her father serving in Vietnam. But I did,

on her behalf, and as I walked up the ramp,
heard the boots shuffling across the tarmac:
the other men as they climbed in behind him.

There were no individual seats, just two benches
running down both sides, and bubble-shaped
windows which looked out on the jungle,

straps to hold you in. About every five feet,
a medical kit was inset in the wall, a red cross
painted on it to remind you this was not a drill.

She said he only talked about his experience once,
and that even then it wasn’t much. It was a tale
he told around the campfire to her and her sister

when they were children. Like a ghost story,
the Viet Cong were the bogeymen in the bush,
but smaller, wielding machine guns, machetes.

He never spoke of losing any friends there,
of the woman in Saigon, the photograph
her mother found in a box of medals

he’d won for assorted acts of bravery,
or why he won them. He was also silent
when he and his daughter walked down the path

to the Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington,
as if he was remembering walking up a ramp,
the names of those who went with him.