Child of the 60s

This is a revised version of a poem originally published in Somewhere on the Edge of Words. Written in honor of all who served in Vietnam. A copy of the original version was left at the Vietnam memorial Wall in Washington, DC, in October, 2000, before any of us had any clue of the new tragedies yet to come.

A Child of the 60s

A child of the 60s

I toddled about on wobbly legs as the world stumbled

and a president died.

And they all cried

all those people on the news and in the Life

magazine that lay untouched on the coffee table.

I touched it.

I ran my hand along the cover

my chubby baby fingers examining a widow’s black veil

a flag covered casket.

Without knowing what or why or how

a nation’s tears came down as

rain upon my soul

drenching me to the very core.

Then there was war.

It was an old war a cold war though they said the jungles were hot

and deadly.

And our boys died.

 American boys died.

I looked to the neighbor boys there in our cozy little corner of cookie-cutter suburbia

and wondered if they too would die

somewhere in a hot green jungle

in a green and red Technicolor jungle like the ones I saw at night on Daddy’s Zenith

jungles as far away as the little cabin up north that took an eternity to drive to

where I could hear the bombs go off at night

as our boys learned how to fight playing

games at Camp Grayling.

Games.

I knew it was real

as real as the musty sheets Mommy set under my chin

when she tucked me in to protect me from the distant thunder that was not thunder

and boomed its way into my dreams

reminding me to pray

as I did every day for our American boys.

A child of the 60s

still tasting the salt of my nation’s drying tears

I was confused by the anger that festered on the evening news

so many different views when all that really mattered

all that should matter was our American boys.

A child of the 60s

I saw my nation stumble and all I could do was reach out my hand

my tiny, useless, child sized hand

in the impossible hope that

somehow

it might be enough to guide

one

boy

home.