Veterans’ Day is our holiday on November 11 to honor those who have served through our military. On this day in 2024, I am posting a poem found in Come before Winter (published 2024) about a college friend who served in the Vietnam War. I have often thought of him, how he awoke at night after his tenure in Nam with nighmares and cold sweats, hollering out into the darkness. This is a poem that honors David while still bringing attention to the horrors of war. I also encourage you to read a favorite poem of mine – “Facing It” by Yusef Komunyakaa about a Vietnam vet at the memorial in Washington D.C., who experiences once again the war-torn sights and sounds of the jungle that merge into his moment at the wall in D.C.
Prompt: Write about a particular person who has served our country, a father, grandfather, uncle, son, daughter, husband, wife, even yourself. Perhaps you will choose to write about a particular war. There are many offshoots to this assignment. As always, take any angle or perspective you choose and honor those in your life who have served our country well.
Summer of ‘69
It was a hum-drum existence, the summer
of ’69. We stood in tiny cubicles eight hours
a day buttoning newly, manufactured shirts,
folding and tucking this way and that, compressing
for packaging and shipping. Day-in, day-out we
stretched and tugged and pulled and pinched to make
garments pucker and wrinkle-free, earning money
for our own bell bottoms, leather vests, tie-dyes,
and class rings. Nothing extraordinary that summer
except Dylan and Joplin, Hendrix and The Doors
and that one day in early June when we rushed
at lunch like the lava at Pompeii to tune the car’s
radio to the local staticky station. We held our breath.
Would your number come up? If so, could you be
deferred? Would you be numbered among the lucky?
I heard after your tour in Nam you continued to battle
the night, writhing, twisting, fetaling into the darkness,
your screams curdling even the stars. And when I learned
of your fateful fall from the rooftop a few years later,
I thought about our mundane lives that summer of ‘69.
How fresh we were, not yet weary with life’s furrows
and folds, its creases, its lines.
Photo: From our Vietnam Intensive Study at George Walton Academy, Jan./Feb. 2018