A Year of Conflict on the Other Side of the World

Remember Armistice Day--Veterans Day

Photo by Nonik Bela on Unsplash

Her eyes burned with ancient fire
and she spoke in a register so low
it reached me as goosebumps,
bone vibration, the words following
like a patter of raindrops on mossy logs

She was known as a shaman
her hair dark at the roots
white as milkweed floss at the ends,
she said she was glad to be back
in a time when the land grew trees

It was forbidden to speak with her
so of course we did
at the pond beyond Firebase Oasis
in the deep jungles of the Central Highlands
she, tucked among the gnarly roots
spinning tales of surfing time

Time was a vast forest, she said
and she could alight
in a grove of future if she chose
or ball herself into lightning and arc across
a still green sea to a moment when creatures
first slithered onto land

She said we could protect ourselves
from the danger heading our way,
gray projectiles against a blue sky,
and she would show us how through
“corner eye,” amulets, and “cloud sinew”
and ask for nothing in return

We were interested in any edge
but highly skeptical with our Western values
and so we walked away from her offer and
never knew if what she said held even a grain of truth
and as it happened we were ambushed the very next day
and the day after that, and for many days thereafter

We spent a forever year under a monsoon sky
each day a non sequitur within a world
of animism and unexplainable events.
I will never forget the thick rich
smell of dripping Vietnam jungle
and I will never forget the young men 
who gave their lives in a foreign land 
fighting a fight they never would have chosen
but were called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice

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Remember Armistice Day-Veterans Day
Support veterans!

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