Non-fiction / My First Poem

My first poem (ever – not even a roses are red sort of thing before) was written when I was 18 and had just received verification of orders for Vietnam.  Because of the difficulty in performing helicopter assaults into hot LZs (landing zones) a special program was developed to train a selected group of soldiers to go in before hand and be in place when the assault came in.  There was more to it than that, but not relevant to my eventual writing.  Some how the Army had developed a list of people it felt were appropriate for this sort of work.  The list was short and my name was on it; those chosen were not ordered to join the group, but instead were invited to participate.  The caveat was that acceptance of the assignment included duty in Vietnam.  I was flattered and accepted.  My plans were to go to Vietnam anyway and this seemed a more interesting way to do so.  The acknowledgment that I was accepted for training also verified my obligated tour of duty.

Reality is wholly different than a what if theory.  I had just been informed of the combat death of a friend.  This was the second call like this in a period of less than a month.  One was a good friend from high school that was very supportive during training for sports.  The second fellow I knew since grade school and we had stayed at each others homes’ over the years.  It was hard to imagine them dead; they were your typical high school teenagers. Bucky was a superb athlete, held high grades, class president for his graduation class , popular all around, and eligible for both academic and athletic scholarships.  His father was president of the school board.  Bucky was a very talented, very gifted individual destined for college and a notable career; except that he was now dead.  He had earned his right to go to college on merit alone, but he went into the Marines and traded his future for his country.  

Dusty was more towards the middle average high school teenager.  More into cars, girls, being with friends and living life as it came. He was an average guy; the one that you live near and talk to through a comfortable life time.  Dusty was also a volunteer and went into the Marines; that normal life ended up near the DMZ.  I stood there on the phone and listened while my parents explained how I had lost a friend. My paper work for transfer into the special program was in my hand. They didn’t know that I had volunteered for the program and a mandatory tour in Vietnam.  I never told them of my plans and orders though that is why I had called home; I was 18 and excited about the roll I would be playing. Papers in hand I listened about Dusty and about what his mother was going through (she was a single parent and he her only child – he didn’t have to go). The special training and the orders went unmentioned; they had just finished the trauma of helping friends bury their children.  The subject of my decision was best not mentioned.  All they ever knew was that I finished training and went to Vietnam just like any soldier of the time.

I went back to the barracks and sat on my bunk.  The gear I was packing surrounded me; most of it to be stored since we would be specially equipped for training.  I just sat and remembered.  Though not yet real a slow dawning of reality was beginning to rise.  I had the abstract understanding of my mortality; Bucky and Dusty brought a more personal understanding much closer.  So I sat and thought as the barracks shut down for the night preparing for lights out.  The darkness helped as did the movement in sleeping of the other soldiers.

Finally I took my copy of my orders and went and sat on the outer stoop of the barracks and began writing.  There were several attempts trying to write my thoughts in prose.  After a while I scratched out a odd outline of thoughts to better organize to write.  Sitting there without a clue has to how to proceed I became aware that what I had scratched down looked vaguely like what little I knew or understood of poetry.  I re-scratched that line in a more orderly rational sequence.  Sat a bit longer then my mind opened.  The back blank sheets of my orders were by this time used up so I went to the face sheet and wrote my first poem.  This poem has stood as written for forty one years with only two words changed when I recopied the poem into a small note book.  The poem is not great nor necessarily note worthy.  It could possibly be improved in terms of the convention of poetic style and structure; it could even be fleshed out a bit.  However no editing will ever be done to it; it has stood for forty one years as written and is my best memorial to two friends; at the time the prelude to my own potential obituary.

Over time the writing and writing style matured.  Much of what I had written was fragments on scrapes of paper.  Some were written whole and complete.  There are two others that have never been edited save the word change when they were being copied into the footlocker based note book.  

So here is my first poem:

A WORD OF DEATH

What is death?
Death is but a word,
if you change its name
people will still die;
death is the unknown,
the not yet imagined.
People pass through the gate
never to return;
there is no rapport
with the land of darkness.
When people die
they leave behind a body;
a body is just
a place we live inside.
What happens to thoughts,
the will, the soul?
Can a person stop existing
as though they never were?
Marvel the irony of life
for in this great intrigue
the answer is found
only in death.

I’ll share another with you in this blog.  This second poem was written mid-pacific during the long flight back to Vietnam for my second tour.  I sat at the window of that air plane for about 20-hours. Looking out the window hoped the plane would turn back; tried to will it to turn back.  By then my mortality was a known factor and that once I got back to Vietnam my mortality could be excised at any given moment, from any random event and by any random bullet.  This all weighed on my mind all through the flight.  There was a moment in an unmark able location when from the window of the plane I could see tall columns of cumulus clouds.  In such an expanse offered by the pacific these clouds were spread out and well away from each other.  I envisioned a chess board with the clouds the chest pieces.  Watching them float so peacefully made me want to have the plane swoop down through and among those clouds.  An unrealistic desire.  I found my self gliding through space and whirling in and around those cloud; doing so would keep me from reaching Vietnam.  Then the thought and desire connected and I wrote the poem.  The words are my escape from the bad time coming:

TO SOAR

What happiness to soar away,
beyond stark images of man and war
to climb until all color becomes one,
then float peacefully in the void.

What joy to imbibe rarefied air
when folding wings in Icarian thrill,
fall toward the rook of clouds,
spreading wings to soar again,
up and through, circling around
against the fringe of earthly bounds.

What delight in touching a friendly cloud,
to soar the heights above and feel
the glory of playing tag with heaven.

None of what else about me can express who I am better than what you read above.  I am working towards completion of a forty one year old project; a book of poetry describing a trip through the world of Vietnam and then how home was no longer home.  I couldn’t write book so I penned the experience through poetry.

Joseph

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